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GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 


London:  Humphrey  Milford 
Oxford  University  Press 


«*e^  iK- 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 
BEFORE  PLATO 


BY 


ROBERT  SCOON,  B.A.  (Oxon.),  Ph.D, 

ASSOCIATE    PROFESSOR    OF    PHILOSOPHY 
IN    PRINCETON    UNIVERSITY 


PRINCETON 

PRINCETON  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

MCMXXVIII 


COPYRIGHT,    I928,   PRINCETON    UNIVERSITY   PRESS 


B 


PRINTED  AT   THE    PRINCETON    UNIVERSITY   PRESS 
PRINCETON,   NEW  JERSEY,   U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

A  SUGGESTION  offered  by  Dean  Frederick  J.  E. 
Woodbridge  of  Columbia  University,  to  work 
back  from  Plato  along  epistemological  lines,  is 
ultimately  responsible  for  this  book;  but  the  suggestion 
undoubtedly  met  with  a  ready  response  because  of  three 
years  spent  at  Oxford  in  the  School  of  Literae  Huma- 
niores  under  the  guidance  of  H.  H.  Joachim,  now  Fellow 
of  New  College  and  Professor  of  Logic  in  the  Univer- 
sity. It  is  with  a  feeling  of  real  pleasure  that  I  pay  my 
homage  to  these  former  teachers. 

The  original  of  the  first  six  chapters  of  Part  I  was 
offered  to,  and  accepted  by,  the  Graduate  Faculties  of 
Arts  and  Sciences  in  Columbia  University,  as  a  doctoral 
thesis.  Since  then  the  scope  and  character  of  the  work  have 
fundamentally  altered;  and  in  this  later  period  I  owe 
most  to  Professor  A.  A.  Bowman,  formerly  Chairman  of 
the  Department  of  Philosophy  in  Princeton  and  now 
Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  Glasgow,  who  read  the 
whole  manuscript  and  offered  valuable  criticisms.  I  wish 
also  to  express  my  appreciation  of  the  spirit  of  helpfulness 
manifested  by  members  of  the  staff  of  the  Princeton  Uni- 
versity Press,  and  in  particular  to  Mr.  Frank  D.  Halsey, 
Assistant  Manager,  for  his  careful  attention  to  the  editing 
of  the  manuscript.  Finally,  I  am  indebted  to  my  wife, 
who  has  read  all  the  proofs,  and  to  my  father-in-law, 
President  John  Grier  Hibben,  himself  a  philosopher,  for 
his  affectionate  interest  and  constant  encouragement. 

Robert  Scoon 
Princeton 
December  1927 


ABBREVIATIONS  USED  IN  THE  NOTES 


Archiv  Archiv  fur  Geschichte  der  Philosophie. 

B,  D,  (under    I.  Bywater's  arrangement  of  the  Fragments  in  Hera- 
Heraclitus)     clitus  Ephesius:  Reliquiae  (followed  by  Burnet); 
and  H.  Diels'  arrangement  in  DFV. 

Burnet  J.  Burnet,  Early  Greek  Philosophy  (Third  Edition) . 

Cornford         F.  M.  Cornford,  From  Religion  to  Philosophy. 

DFV  H.  Diels,  Die  Fragmente  der  Vorsokratiker  (dritte 

Auflage),  Vol.  I. 

Dox.  H.  Diels,  Doxographi  Graeci. 

Gk.  Phil.  J.  Burnet,  Greek  Philosophy.  I.  Thales  to  Plato. 

Gomperz         T.  Gomperz,  Greek  Thinkers  (authorized  English 
edition),  Vol.  I. 

RP  Ritter    et    Preller,    Historia    Philosophiae    Graecae 

(editio  octava). 

Tannery  P.  Tannery,  Pour  Vhistoire  de  la  science  hellene. 

WD  Hesiod,  Works  and  Days. 

Zeller  E.   Zeller,   Die  Philosophie  der   Griechen    (funfte 

Auflage).  Erster  Theil. 

Zimmern          A.  F.  Zimmern,  The  Greek  Commonwealth  (Third 
Edition). 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFACE  V 

PART  ONE 

Greek  Systems  of  Philosophy  to  the  Time  of  Plato 

INTRODUCTION  3 

-^CHAPTER  I 

Early  Views  of  the  World  and  the  Rise  of 
Philosophy  7 

^CHAPTER  II 

T hales,  Anaximander,  Anaximenes  25 

"■'CHAPTER  III 

Pythagoras  and  Xenophanes  35 

*  CHAPTER  IV 

Heraclitus  5 l 

*.  CHAPTER  V 

Parmenides  63 

Chapter  vi 

Empedocles  82 

""CHAPTER  vii 

Anaxagoras  95 

z 

Chapter  viii 

New  Tendencies  107 

CHAPTER  IX 

Philolaus  133 

vii 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER  X 

Socrates  \c\ 

CHAPTER  XI 

The  Atomists  196 

PART  TWO 

The  Development  of  Greek  Philosophy  to  the 
Time  of  Plato 

'-CHAPTER  I 

.    The  First  and  Second  Periods  of  Greek 

Philosophy  233 

^CHAPTER  II 

Scientific  Foundations  of  Cosmology  246 

CHAPTER  III 

The  Practical  and>  Ethical  Implications  of 

Early  Greek  Philosophy  284 

CHAPTER  IV 

\#  Minor  Tendencies  in  the  Development  of 

Greek  Philosophy   ■  299 

(CHAPTER  V 

The  History  of  Greek  Philosophy  32 1 

APPENDICES 
APPENDIX  I 

The  Fragments  of  Philolaus  339 

CAPPENDIX  II 

Conjecture  on  the  Development  of  Pytha- 
goreanism  343 

index  347 


PART  ONE 

GREEK  SYSTEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 
TO  THE  TIME  OF  PLATO 


INTRODUCTION 

THAT  philosophy,  whatever  it  is  or  should  be,  was 
a  product  of  the  Greek  genius  is  a  commonplace 
of  modern  scholarship;  and  the  name  of  the  in- 
ventor, Thales,  is  equally  famous.  Hence  all  that  might 
seem  necessary  for  an  historian  of  philosophy  would  be 
to  record  the  doctrines  of  Thales  and  his  successors.  But 
this  easy  method  of  settling  the  matter  includes  an  impli- 
cation which  needs  to  be  brought  into  the  open :  it  suggests 
that  there  was  no  philosophy  before  Thales,  who  must 
therefore  have  originated  an  entirely  new  thing.  Such 
an  implication  seems  to  lurk  in  the  common  description  of 
Hesiod's  works  as  mythology,  and  Thales'  as  philosophy. 
But  even  granting  the  validity  of  this  assumption,  it  is 
impossible  to  appreciate  the  newness  of  any  thing  except 
against  the  background  of  what  went  before  it;  for  "new" 
means  that  which  was  not  previously  in  existence.  If  there- 
fore philosophy  began  with  Thales,  we  can  hardly  under- 
stand the  significance  of  its  creation  unless  we  know 
something  about  the  preceding  period. 

But  probably  to  most  of  us  the  case  is  not  quite  so 
simple.  The  present  age,  infected  with  an  evolutionary 
point  of  view,  is  disposed  to  question  the  sudden  genesis 
of  novelties,  and  prefers  to  seek  for  their  explanation  in 
antecedent  environing  conditions.  That  change  is  real 
and  new  things  are  generated  is  not  denied;  but  these 
changes  and  creations  do  not  seem  to  break  the  continuity 
of  history.  We  are  thus  led  to  the  notion  of  prehistory. 

[33 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

Primarily  the  term  is  general  and  refers  to  the  period  be- 
fore history  began ;  but  its  meaning  may  legitimately  be 
extended  to  particular  aspects  or  tendencies  of  history, 
and  when  so  used,  it  signifies  the  antecedent  events  or 
influences  that  led  up  to  a  given  effect.  The  implication  of 
this  concept  is  that  new  things  are  created  but  that  they 
may  be  linked  up  with,  and  partially  explained  by,  pre- 
vious occurrences  that  somehow  pointed  in  their  direction. 
The  essential  novelty  of  the  new  is  thus  admitted,  but  it 
is  not  insisted  upon  to  the  point  of  obscurantism  and  to 
the  exclusion  of  historical  continuity. 

We  may  thus  speak  of  the  prehistory  of  philosophy, 
meaning  thereby  the  influences  in  Greek  thought  and  liter- 
ature before  Thales,  which  may  have  had  some  share  in 
the  production  of  the  thing  we  call  philosophy.  We  do 
not  yet  know  what  those  influences  were,  nor  indeed 
whether  there  were  any  such  at  all — the  answer  to  these 
questions  must  wait  for  an  examination  of  the  remains  of 
the  period ;  but  if  there  were  influences  of  this  nature,  we 
could  think  of  them  as  philosophical  in  the  adjectival 
sense.  No  doubt  such  a  view  presupposes  that  philosophy, 
or  anything  else  we  subject  to  the  same  kind  of  scrutiny, 
was  a  composite,  some  of  whose  elements  at  least  existed 
previously;  but  even  so  we  are  not  committed  to  a  mechan- 
istic or  any  other  theory  as  to  the  manner  of  their  final 
combination  into  a  new  entity. 

With  these  prepossessions  we  may  well  ask  what  new 
thing  came  into  being  with  Thales,  or  what  was  new  in 
the  thought  of  Thales;  and  in  order  to  answer  the  ques- 
tion, we  shall  have  to  discover  something  in  his  thought 
which  did  not  exist  before  him.  With  the  same  preposses- 
sions in  mind,  we  should  also  inquire  what  previous  ten- 
dencies of  a  philosophical  character,  if  any,  may  have 

C4] 


INTRODUCTION 

suggested  or  occasioned  the  creation  of  philosophy  by 
Thales;  and  again  we  shall  be  forced  back  into  the  pre- 
ceding period. 

One  further  consideration  prompts  us  in  the  same  direc- 
tion. It  is  rJhe  knowledge  that  in  these  early  times  with 
which  we  are  dealing  there  were  no  formal  or  technical 
divisions  of  subject-matter,  by  which  men's  thought  about 
one  set  of  objects  was  marked  off  and  distinguished  from 
thought  about  other  sets.  Sir  Henry  Maine  notes  this  char- 
acteristic in  the  first  legal  codes:  "They  mingled  up 
religious,  civil  and  merely  moral  ordinances,  without  any 
regard  to  differences  in  their  essential  character ;  and  this 
is  consistent  with  all  we  know  of  early  thought  from  other 
sources,  the  severance  of  law  from  morality,  and  of  reli- 
gion from  law,  belonging  very  distinctly  to  the  later  stages 
of  mental  progress."1  We  could  add  also  to  this  list  the 
severance  of  philosophy  from  religion  and  from  science, 
which  was  not  effected  until  much  later.  But  the  real  truth 
seems  to  be  rather  that  these  terms  themselves  represent 
categories  which  did  not  exist  in  early  times ;  and  when  we 
use  them,  we  are  applying  our  own  classifications  to  ob- 
jects that  were  then  not  classified.  If  we  put  Hesiod  under 
"mythology"  and  Thales  under  "philosophy,"  we  are  not 
thinking  in  the  concepts  of  Hesiod  and  Thales,  for  these 
categories  had  not  been  invented  in  their  day.  And  there- 
fore if  we  say  that  philosophy  began  with  Thales  and  that 
before  him  there  was  only  mythology,  we  are  making  a 
distinction  which  Thales  did  not  recognize  and  which  we 
must  justify.  This  justification  can  be  made  only  after  a 
study  of  preceding  thought  and  comparison  of  it  with 
that  of  Thales. 

1  Ancient  Law,  chap,  i,  p.  14. 


CHAPTER  I 

EARLY  VIEWS  OF  THE  WORLD  AND  THE 
RISE  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

l.  The  earliest  records  of  Greek  thought  are  to  be  found 
in  Homer  and  Hesiod ;  but  it  is  probable  that  the  worship 
of  local  gods  of  nature,  such  as  the  Mother  and  the  Maid 
at  Eleusis,  represents  a  stratum  of  culture  that  is  as  old 
as,  and  perhaps  older  than,  Homeric  civilization.1  In 
these  cults,  as  well  as  in  the  writings  of  the  poets,  we  can 
discern  traces  of  the  prephilosophic  view  of  the  world.  We 
shall  examine  these  two  sources  of  information  separately. 

2.  If  we  turn  to  Homer  and  ask  the  question:  What  is 
it  that  makes  things  happen  in  the  world1?,  the  answer 
that  we  invariably  find  is  a  god.  Whether  rain  falls,  clouds 
arise,  battle  is  joined  and  won,  a  prince  feels  angry,  or  a 
king  gives  judgment,  the  event  is  ultimately  the  result 
of  some  god's  determination.  It  may  be  affirmed  that  in 
things  and  in  men  divinity  is  the  only  efficient  cause  of 
action  that  Homer  knows.2 

But  the  divine  will  is  not  conceived  as  functioning 

1  Farnell,  Cults  of  the  Greek  States,  III,  p.  2 ;  Gilbert  Murray,  Four  Stages 
of  Greek  Religion,  chaps.  I,  n ;  Miss  Harrison,  Prolegomena  to  the  Study  of 
Greek  Religion,  chap.  i. 

2  Mr.  Leaf,  Homer  and  History,  p.  19,  says :  "if  we  are  seeking  for  his- 
torical fact  from  the  words  of  a  poet,  the  statement  'Achilles  slew  Hector 
with  the  aid  of  Athene'  is  precisely  equivalent  to  the  statement  'Achilles 
slew  Hector,'  neither  more  nor  less."  I  might  say  that  the  historical  fact 
which  interests  me  now  is  that  Homer  introduced  Athene. — Similarly  for 
the  early  Hebrews:  "Everything  is  supernatural,  that  is,  direct  divine 
operation,"  A.  B.  Davidson  s.v.  "God,"  Diet,  of  the  Bible,  II,  p.  198. 

til 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

according  to  fixed  methods.  There  is,  to  be  sure,  the  three- 
fold partition  of  the  world  among  Zeus,  Poseidon,  and 
Hades ;  but  within  their  respective  provinces  each  of  these 
great  overlords  is  a  free  agent.  Zeus  acts  according  as  he 
wills,3  and  the  other  gods  and  goddesses  are  moved  by 
their  individual  whims  or  the  orders  of  their  superiors. 
They  have  their  customs  ;4  and  these  are  the  only  guides 
to  action  that  they  possess  or  that  are  known  to  men ;  but 
it  is  in  their  power  to  break  their  wonted  habits  if  they 
choose.5  Moreover  Fate,  which  sometimes  is  represented 
in  later  poetry  as  superior  to  the  gods,  is  not  so  pictured 
in  Homer;  it  and  the  gods  appear  as  "concurrent  and 
usually  harmonious  agencies."6  But  their  alliance  brings 
no  regularity  to  the  operation  of  the  world. 

Divinity  does  not  even  connote  moral  regularity  or 
goodness,  for  though  at  times  the  gods  are  the  champions 
of  high  moral  ideals,  yet  they  are  constantly  described  as 
subject  to  all  the  vices  and  pettinesses  of  mankind.  Indeed, 
as  Mr.  Lang  has  remarked,  Homer  ascribes  to  the  gods  "a 
score  of  human  foibles  Which  he  never  illustrates  in  the 
persons  of  his  heroic  men  and  women."7  Zeller8  and 
Burnet9  maintain  that  the  word  for  god  meant  primarily 
an  object  of  worship,  and  they  may  be  right;  but  the 

3  Od.  VI,  188:  "Olympian  Zeus  himself  distributes  prosperity  to  men, 
good  or  bad,  to  each  one  according  as  he  wills." 

4  cf.  Ski}  6eQv,  Od.  XIX,  43. 

5  Helios,  the  sun  god,  threatens  to  go  and  shine  among  the  dead,  Od. 

xii,  377-383- 

6  Jebb,  Homer,  p.  51.  Sometimes  an  event  happens  "beyond  fate,"  e.g. 
//.  XVI,  780;  Od.  I,  35.  Cornford  (p.  12)  holds  that  the  gods  in  Homer 
were  definitely  subject  to  fate ;  but  he  does  not  prove  the  point  from  his 
citations,  and  he  has  neglected  several  passages  that  suggest  the  opposite 
interpretation.  Moreover  he  has  confused  Homeric  and  fifth  century  ideas. 

7  The  World  of  Homer,  p.  121.  The  word  dperr),  sometimes  used  of  gods, 
seems  to  mean  excellence  of  any  sort,  "praestantia,"  not  "virtus" ;  see 
Ebeling,  Lex.  Horn.,  s.v. ;  Leaf  on  //.  IX,  498. 

8  Phil,  der  Griech.,  p.  230. 

9  p.  14 ;  but  he  shows  that  this  primary  meaning  was  lost  in  some  cases. 

C8] 


EARLY  VIEWS  OF  THE  WORLD 

question  is:  Why  worship  it1?  The  answer,  I  think,  must 
be :  because  the  god  is  able  to  do  things  that  will  help  or 
hinder,  and  therefore  has  to  be  propitiated.10  Majesty  and 
power  are  the  paramount  qualities  of  the  early  Greek 
Zeus,  as  well  as  of  the  early  Hebrew  Yahweh;  abomin- 
able lust  was  occasionally  ascribed  to  Zeus,  and  the  fell 
attributes  of  a  tribal  warrior  to  Yahweh,  each  of  them 
being  respected  for  his  might  rather  than  reverenced  for 
his  virtue.11  The  gods  of  Homer,  therefore,  both  in  their 
relations  to  one  another  and  in  the  governance  of  their 
particular  spheres,  do  not  act  according  to  stable  ordi- 
nances; and  as  these  divinities  are  the  only  effective  agents 
or  causes  of  activity  in  the  world,  the  universe  is  operated 
without  regularity.12 

In  Hesiod  the  gods  perform  much  the  same  functions 
for  the  world.  Our  interest  lies  not  so  much  in  the  The- 
ogony,  which  describes  the  genealogy  and  history  of  the 
gods,  as  in  the  Works  and  Days,  where  the  current  views 
on  many  mundane  topics  find  expression  in  the  words  of 
the  poet  of  the  common  people.  Here,  as  in  Homer,  Zeus 
appears  as  the  all-powerful  god  of  the  world,  governing 
all  things  as  he  wills;  and  though  his  activity  is  perhaps 

10  cf .  Jebb,  Homer,  p.  50 :  "The  basis  of  Homeric  religion  is  the  feeling 
that  'all  men  have  need  of  the  gods'  (Od.  Ill,  48),  and  that  the  gods  are 
quickly  responsive  to  this  need,  if  they  are  duly  worshipped."  cf.  also 
Od.  XIV,  83-4.  The  gods  may  be  turned  from  their  purpose  by  men,  //. 
IX,  497- 

11  For  Yahweh  as  the  All-powerful,  cf .  Huit,  La  Philosophic  de  la  Nature 
chez  les  Anciens,  p.  24;  as  preeminently  a  god  of  war,  Addis,  Hebrew  Re- 
ligion, p.  72.  A.  B.  Davidson,  s.v.  "God"  in  Diet,  of  the  Bible,  argues  for  the 
moral  quality  of  the  early  Yahweh,  but  I  do  not  think  his  references  are 
convincing.  Certainly  moral  quality  is  only  occasional  and  secondary.  The 
prophets,  beginning  with  Amos,  first  developed  the  ethical  character  of 
Yahweh;  cf.  Gore,  Belief  in  God,  p.  85,  and  for  the  process  by  which  the 
early  numen  is  moralized,  Otto,  The  Idea  of  the  Holy,  chaps,  vm,  X. 

12  Rohde,  Psyche,  p.  429,  speaks  of  this  view  of  the  world  as  a  "history  of 
most  important  world-events,  which  was  consummated  in  single  and  iso- 
lated acts  of  the  conscious  caprice  of  divine  personalities." 

L9l 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

more  regular  and  customary  than  in  the  earlier  epic  poems, 
his  arbitrary  power  is  still  absolute.13  He  is  not  subject 
to  fate,  but  in  a  passage  of  the  Theogony  (904)  is  repre- 
sented as  having  himself  given  the  three  sisters  their  pre- 
rogatives. The  very  fact  that  the  gods  can  be  moved  by 
prayers  and  sacrifices  shows  that  their  wills  are  free.  In 
short,  the  world  and  the  physical  events  that  take  place 
in  it  depend  on  unfettered  divine  agencies. 

In  the  Theogony,  no  moral  character  whatsoever  is  at- 
tributed to  the  gods;  among  themselves  they  act  as  they 
please  and  for  men  they  are  the  far-away  powers  that  rule 
the  world.14  But  in  the  Works  and  Days,  the  gods,  and 
especially  Zeus,  are  represented  as  champions  of  human 
right.  Justice  and  the  immortal  guardians  set  by  Zeus 
wander  over  the  earth  to  watch  the  actions  of  men  and  to 
reward  them  accordingly.15  Prosperity  comes  to  the  home 
of  the  upright,  but  the  wicked  draw  down  upon  them- 
selves divine  anger  and  vengeance.  This  is  a  conscious 
attempt  on  the  part  of  the  poet,  and  no  doubt  of  the  com- 
munity in  which  he  lived,  to  give  dignity  and  prestige 
to  the  traditional  institutions  of  society  by  representing 
them  as  god-given  and  therefore  under  the  protection 
of  the  gods.  The  artificial  character  of  the  process  is  evi- 
dent in  such  a  sentence  as  "Gods  and  men  are  angry  with 
him  who  lives  idle" ;  and  the  whole  scheme  is  an  instance 
of  the  universal  human  tendency  to  create  religious  sanc- 
tions for  social  usage.  In  Greece  this  attempt  was  fore- 
doomed to  trouble,  because  it  was  impossible  to  eliminate 

13  W-D  267,  268,  665-8. 

14  Typical  in  this  respect  is  Hecate.  "Great  honor  comes  very  easily  to 
him  whose  prayers  the  goddess  receives  favorably,  and  she  bestows  wealth 
on  him,  for  the  power  is  surely  hers" — Theog.  418.  But  her  aid  does  not 
depend  on  any  moral  quality  in  the  worshipper — "to  whom  she  wills  it,  she 
gives  great  aid  and  benefit"  {ibid.  429). 

15  W-D  249-64. 

C  10  ] 


EARLY  VIEWS  OF  THE  WORLD 

the  traditional  immorality  of  the  gods  without  destroying 
their  personalities. 

It  will  be  seen  from  this  short  sketch  that  in  the  The- 
ogony,  where  the  gods  are  pictured  chez  eux,  they  appear 
as  free  agents,  subject  to  no  restraint;  and  that  in  the 
Works  and  Days  they  have  theoretically  the  same  un- 
hindered dominion,  but  they  serve  also  in  a  general  way 
as  sanctions  for  the  moral  order  of  society.  They  are  not 
themselves  amenable  to  any  laws,  but  they  hold  human 
beings  to  their  own  human  laws.  Thus  the  physical  world 
for  Hesiod  is  a  place  of  little  or  no  regularity  (though 
the  gods  have  their  settled  preferences,  which  it  is  worth 
while  to  know),  while  on  the  other  hand  society  has  its 
customs  or  fixed  rules  of  conduct,  which  the  gods  enforce. 

3.  In  attempting  to  form  an  idea  of  the  Greek  view 
of  nature,  we  cannot  be  content  with  the  literary  records 
but  must  turn  as  well  to  the  local  cults,  in  which  the 
more  popular  religious  beliefs  are  embedded.  The  striking 
feature  of  these  cults  for  us  is  the  fact  that  they  seem  to 
have  been  connected  with  festivals  which  were  celebrated 
periodically,  and  among  them  were  many  that  were  con- 
cerned with  the  regular  sequences  of  nature.  The  Anthe- 
steria  and  the  Thargelia,  for  example,  were  held  in  the 
spring  and  summer,  and  seem  to  have  got  their  original 
significance  by  association  with  their  respective  seasons.16 
They  were  annual  rites  that  gained  their  meaning  from 
the  regular  changes  of  nature.  Likewise  the  multitudinous 
festivals  of  the  Earth-goddess,  Demeter,  and  Persephone 
appear  to  have  been  preeminently  agrarian  in  their  earliest 
forms,  and  in  some  of  them  we  know  that  the  rebirth  and 
death  of  vegetation  were  symbolized.  Moreover,  as  the 

16  Frazer,  Golden  Bough,  I,  chap,  in,  pp.  320-63 ;  Mommsen,  Teste  der 
Stadt  Athen,  pp.  384-404,  468-86. 

:  11  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

fertility  of  the  earth  and  of  human  beings  was  closely 
associated  in  these  chthonic  cults,  we  are  not  surprised  to 
find  that  man's  existence  is  often  thought  of  as  subject 
to  a  cycle  of  changes.  Indeed  this  notion  of  periodically 
recurring  phenomena  is  found  most  clearly  in  the  Orphic 
doctrine  of  the  Wheel  of  Birth,  where  it  is  particularly 
applied  to  men.  In  its  essence,  this  was  a  belief  that  the 
.  souls  of  men  are  reincarnated  after  death  and  live  again 
in  other  bodies;  and  it  is  found  in  one  form  or  another 
in  Pythagoras,  Empedocles,  and  Plato,  as  well  as  in  spe- 
cifically Orphic  sources.17  Thus  with  regard  to  particular 
natural  processes,  such  as  the  growth  and  death  of  plants 
and  animals,  the  Greeks  had  rudimentary  ideas  of  regular 
activity,  and  these  must  be  put  by  the  side  of  that  other 
view  of  the  world  as  a  place  of  isolated  events. 

4.  The  implicit  contradiction  between  these  two  no- 
tions was  not  peculiar  to  the  Greeks,  for  traces  of  it  are 
discernible  in  other  peoples  of  the  same  original  stock. 
Eduard  Meyer  brings  out  their  double  view  of  nature 
in  the  following  words:  "Beside  the  mass  of  particular 
events,  which  mythical  interpretation  referred  to  the  voli- 
tion of  a  god  or  a  divinity,  stands  the  uniformity  and 
regular  recurrence  of  phenonema,  which  precludes  every 
caprice  and  subjects  it  to  a  law."18  In  Greek  thought  no- 
where are  the  elements  of  this  latent  contradiction  more 
closely  interwoven  than  in  Hesiod's  Works  and  Days. 
I  have  already  emphasized  his  belief  in  divinity  as  the 
cause  of  physical  occurrences ;  but  we  must  also  notice  that 
in  the  latter  part  of  the  poem  the  year  is  spoken  of  as 
revolving  and  the  work  proper  for  each  season  is  pre- 

17  Lobeck,  Aglaophamus,  II,  chaps,  m,  iv;  Miss  Harrison,  Proleg.,  pp. 
589-600;  and  the  Compagno  Tablets  discussed  by  Gilbert  Murray,  pp. 
668  ff. 

18  Geschichte  des  Altertums  I,  l,  §69. 

C    12   ] 


EARLY  VIEWS  OF  THE  WORLD 

scribed.  The  author  professes  to  believe  that  the  gods 
specially  assigned  certain  labors  to  particular  days,  and 
as  men  were  dependent  on  the  assistance  of  the  gods,  men 
should  know  these  daily  proprieties.  But  whatever  the 
true  reason  for  this  distribution  of  times,  the  result  of  the 
rules  given  was  to  make  a  fixed  calendar  of  the  year  or 
the  month,  and  thus  to  introduce  order  and  regularity  into 
the  life  of  the  laborer.19  Hesiod  therefore  combines  the 
two  points  of  view  with  regard  to  nature;  he  gives  evi- 
dence of  a  belief  that  each  event  is  the  particular  effect 
of  a  god's  will,  but  he  also  perceived  the  regularly  recurr- 
ing seasons  and  the  ordered  work  that  this  fact  brings  to 
the  farmer.  It  was  probably  just  because  he  held  that  the 
seasons  were  divided  by  the  will  of  the  gods,  that  it  was 
impossible  for  him  to  extend  his  idea  of  regularity  into 
the  whole  of  nature.  The  world  was  still  in  the  grip  of 
the  gods,  though  they  had  "settled  down"  to  a  fairly 
definite  course  of  customs. 

This  was  as  far  as  the  Greeks  got  in  their  ideas  of 
nature  until  Thales  grasped  the  idea  of  natural  regularity. 
Although  in  specific  fields  the  gods  of  nature  were  thought 
of  as  undergoing  stated,  periodic  transformations,  yet  the 
anthropomorphic  personalities  of  these  gods,  both  in  liter- 
ature and  in  religious  celebrations,  were  so  inextricably 
suffused  with  whimsical  freedom  of  action  that  no  general 
conception  of  uniformity  in  nature  could  arise. 

5.  Now  that  we  have  surveyed  the  ancient  view  of  the 
physical  world  as  seen  in  Homer,  Hesiod,  and  the  chthonic 
cults,  let  us  turn  to  the  organization  of  human  society 
and  man's  conception  of  its  stability.  Homeric  society  was 
formed  on  the  monarchic  principle,  and  the  king,  beside 
being  the  political  and  military  head  of  the  state,  was 

19  Waltz,  Hesiode  et  son  poeme  moral,  p.  74. 

t  13] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

vested  also  with  the  prerogatives  of  high  priest  and 
judge.20  The  sacrifices  and  prayers  which  he  made  for  the 
city  were  ordinary  matters  of  ancient  life,  in  which  no 
dislocation  of  individual  status  occurred,  and  it  would 
perhaps  not  be  too  great  an  exaggeration  to  put  war  in  the 
same  type  of  administration;  certainly  fighting  was  re- 
garded as  an  inevitable,  although  intermittent  occupation 
for  all  men,  and  the  state  was  so  organized  that  it  could 
conduct  a  war  without  recourse  to  extraordinary 
changes  in  its  structure.21  On  the  other  hand,  every  crime, 
every  revenge,  every  legal  contest  involved  the  position 
of  one  or  more  elements  in  the  whole  social  organism;  and 
it  is  at  this  point  that  we  can  remark  most  clearly  any 
attempt  to  secure  the  continuity  and  regularity  of  human 
activity. 

The  Homeric  idea  of  an  ordinance  or  rule  of  action  is 
embodied  in  the  word  Themistes,  which  were  dooms  or 
judgments  passed  in  each  particular  case  by  the  king  or 
the  judge,  without  necessary  reference  to  any  traditional 
or  fixed  standard.  These  decisions  were  supposed  to  be  the 
result  of  divine  inspiration,22  and  owing  to  their  origin 
from  on  high,  they  do  not  appear  as  connected  by  any 
general  principle  of  right.  They  were,  as  Sir  Henry  Maine 
said,  "separate,  isolated  judgments."23  Homer  knows  no 
legislative  or  constitutional  enactments  having  universal 

20  cf.  //.  IX,  99.  But  the  king  was  not  the  only  judge ;  cf.  L.  Brehier  De 
graecorum  judiciorum  origine;  the  trial  scene  on  the  shield  of  Achilles,  //. 
XVIII,  497-508,  Leaf  notes  ad  loc.  and  in  Journal  of  Hellenic  Studies  VIII, 
122;  Zimmern,  p.  508. 

21  The  Romans  of  Republican  times  seem  to  have  recognized  that  war 
might  produce  an  abnormal  condition  in  the  state,  and  they  made  provision 
for  it  by  the  temporary  appointment  of  dictators.  As  a  constitutional  prac- 
tice, this  was  all  but  unknown  in  Greece.  On  the  aesymnetes  see  Arist.  Pol. 
Ill,  14,  8. 

22  cf .  //.  I,  238. 

28  Ancient  Law,  chap.  1,    p.  4. 

r.  nil 


EARLY  VIEWS  OF  THE  WORLD 

validity  in  a  state.24  Every  action  that  gave  rise  to  dispute 
was  settled  as  an  individual  case ;  and  from  this  point  of 
view  there  was  no  more  regularity  in  the  events  of  organ- 
ized society  than  was  observed  in  nature.25 

This,  however,  was  not  the  only  point  of  view  from 
which  the  Homeric  man  acted.  It  is  plain  that  custom 
exercised  a  restraining  force  and  doubtless  had  already 
begun  to  influence  the  king's  decisions,  so  that  they  would 
not  be  entirely  arbitrary.26  Moreover  the  very  fact  that 
society  was  organized  with  an  official  having  general 
jurisdiction  was  an  instance  of  orderly  political  working 
and  was  regarded  as  a  mark  which  distinguished  the  Greeks 
as  a  superior  race.  The  Cyclopes,  for  example,  "have  no 
deliberative  assemblies  or  themistes  .  .  .  but  each  one  ex- 
ercises jurisdiction  over  his  children  and  wives,  and  they 
have  no  regard  for  one  another."27  As  Maine  suggests,  the 
Cyclopes  are  Homer's  type  of  a  barbarian  and  inferior 
nation.28  Thus  the  warriors  of  the  Iliad,  who  do  have  their 
themistes,  are  in  a  transition  from  a  state  of  social  dis- 
order and  irregularity  to  an  era  of  customary  law.29 

With  the  accumulation  of  a  body  of  decisions,  which 
would  very  soon  acquire  the  force  of  precedents,  broad 

24  The  word  vo/xos,  law,  does  not  occur  in  Homer.  Oi/jus  (singular)  and 
SIk-tj  were  only  beginning  to  acquire  the  significance  of  customary  usage 
and  so  "what  is  right."  cf .  Maine,  loc.  cit. ;  Jebb,  Homer,  pp.  48,  49.  Hirzel, 
Themis,  Dike  und  Verwandtes,  is  instructive,  but  the  author  has  not  been 
careful  to  distinguish  meanings  of  different  periods. 

25  In  this  connection  it  is  worth  quoting  a  phrase  of  Maine's ;  he  speaks 
of  "ancient  society,  in  which  every  man,  living  during  the  greater  part 
of  his  life  under  the  patriarchal  despotism,  was  practically  controlled  in  all 
his  actions  by  a  regimen  not  of  law  but  of  caprice." — Ancient  Law,  p.  7. 

26  cf .  Maine,  Early  Law  and  Custom,  p.  163. 

27  Od.  IX,  112-15. 

28  Ancient  Law,  chap,  v,  p.  133.  cf.  also  Keller,  Homeric  Society,  p.  3; 
Arist.  Eth.  Nic.  X,  9,  1180  a  28. 

29  The  transition  is  described  in  Grote,  Part  II,  chap  ix,  the  main  points 
of  which  have  not  been  modified  by  recent  investigations,  cf.  also  G.  Gil- 
bert, "Beitrage  zur  Entwickelungsgeschichte  und  d.  griech.  Rechtes,"  in 
Jahrb.  fur  klass.  Phil.,  1896;  Zimmern,  Part  II,  chap.  hi. 

:  >5  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

principles  of  conduct  would  emerge  from  the  mass  of 
separate  judgments.  Already  in  Hesiod,  the  existence  of 
this  customary  law  is  plainly  discernible,  although  the 
old  idea  of  judgments  emanating  .from  Zeus  has  not 
entirely  died  out.30  But  81/07  has  taken  on  the  connotation 
of  justice  in  general  as  a  possible  characteristic  of  all  men 
who  are  willing  to  observe  the  sanctioned  rules  of  society, 
and  with  this  conception  has  come  the  notion  of  recog- 
nized modes  of  action.  Now  Hesiod  expressly  says  that 
Zeus  gave  Slkt)  to  men  only  and  that  not  even  animals 
shared  this  quality.31  Thus  the  human  race  was  distin- 
guished from  the  rest  of  the  world  by  the  possession  of 
stable  laws  of  conduct. 

The  process  of  standardizing  conduct  went  on  and  cul- 
minated in  the  great  legal  codes  that  appeared  not  only  in 
the  states  of  continental  Hellas,  but  also  in  the  colonies 
of  the  West  and  on  the  Greek  seacoast  of  Asia  Minor. 
Naturally  these  bodies  of  law  did  not  come  into  existence 
in  different  cities  at  the  same  time;  but  in  general  they 
are  to  be  referred  to  the  seventh,  and  the  early  part  of 
the  sixth,  centuries.32 

6.  If  we  compare  men's  ideas  of  nature  with  the  legalis- 
tic constitution  of  society  at  successive  stages  of  develop- 
ment, we  shall  find  a  remarkable  analogy  between  them. 
Both  from  Homer  and  from  the  evidence  of  anthropology, 
there  are  discernible  traces  of  a  period  in  which  the  events 
of  the  physical  world  were  regarded  as  the  isolated  and 

so  W.D  36;  xheog.  81-96. 

31  W-D  278-85. 

32  e.g.  Zaleucus  at  Locri,  Pittacus  at  Mytilene,  Draco  and  Solon  at  Athens. 
cf.  Wise  in  Companion  to  Greek  Studies,  391  ff. ;  E.  Meyer,  Gesch.  d.  Alt. 
II,  360.  There  are  some  very  instructive  sentences  in  the  Recueil  des  inscrip- 
tions juridiques  grecques  (2nd  series,  1st  fascicule)  on  Solon  and  early 
criminal  law.  It  is  impossible  to  date  the  so-called  laws  of  Lycurgus  at 
Sparta,  and  it  is  doubtful  if  they  may  be  properly  classed  as  laws  or  a 
code;  cf.  E.  Meyer,  Forschungen,  I,  pp.  211-83. 

r.  16] 


EARLY  VIEWS  OF  THE  WORLD 

particular  effects  of  a  divine  whim  or  will ;  and  the  socie- 
ties in  which  these  conceptions  are  found  were  held 
together  by  the  isolated  and  particular  ordinances  of  a 
supreme  chieftain.  This  condition  is  superseded  by  an- 
other, represented  in  different  degrees  by  Homer  and  the 
Hesiodic  poems,  in  which  certain  regularities  of  nature, 
such  as  death  and  the  seasons  of  the  year,  which  had  long 
been  emphasized  in  many  local  cults,  have  been  gener- 
ally appreciated  and  are  considered  as  the  custom  of  the 
divine  agents ;  and  at  the  same  period,  the  social  organism 
is  bound  by  the  usage  and  custom  which  have  been  ac- 
cumulating. After  this,  we  shall  not  be  surprised  to  find 
that  the  era  in  which  political  societies  regulated  their 
existence  more  or  less  extensively  by  uniform  rules  of 
legal  procedure  was  also  that  which  witnessed  the  dis- 
covery that  the  outside  world  was  likewise  regulated  by 
principles  of  uniform  activity. 

Codes  of  law  were  apparently  first  introduced  into  the 
Greek  colonies  of  the  West,  where  the  lack  of  historical 
background  for  political  development,  as  well  as  the 
freer  and  easier  conditions  of  life  would  naturally  lead 
men  to  crystallize  their  ideas  of  government,  in  much  the 
same  way  as  the  American  colonists  wrought  out  their 
constitution.  That  this  tendency  to  codify — and  no  doubt 
partially  to  reform — social  usage  was  felt  in  Ionia  seems 
to  be  proved  by  the  reported  discovery  of  a  mutilated  stone 
pillar  from  Chios,  which  has  preserved  the  evidence  of  an 
early  written  constitution  and  even  of  a  popular  law 
court.33  We  may  thus  infer  that  the  original  home  of 

33  Wilamowitz-Moellendorf ,  Staat  und  Gesellschaft,  p.  78.  Zimmern,  p. 
131,  thinks  that  "the  constitutional  movement  probably  originated,  like 
Greek  poetry  and  philosophy,  in  Ionia." 

C  17  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

philosophy  had  experienced  to  some  degree  the  demand 
for  political  regularity. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  uniform  activity,  both  the 
organized  state  of  society  and  the  outside  physical  world 
were  conceived  in  similar  terms.  In  the  body  politic,  dis- 
order and  dislocation  of  the  individual's  condition  were 
considered  inevitable,  and  in  the  earliest  systems  of  law 
no  serious  attempt  was  made  to  prevent  this  original 
irregularity.  The  ultimate  purpose  of  the  first  codes  was 
apparently  to  facilitate  a  readjustment  after  the  normal 
order  had  been  disturbed.  As  a  general  rule,  they  did  not 
contain  definitions  of  positive  rights  which  could  not  be 
violated;  but  they  outlined  and  clarified  the  procedure 
by  which  the  necessary  rearrangement  should  be  made, 
after  ordinary  conditions  had  been  upset.34  The  whole 
process  therefore  implied  an  initial  state  of  disorder,  a 
readjustment,  and  a  uniform  method  of  procedure. 
— -  In  the  physical  world  the  same  conceptions  are  em- 
ployed by  the  first  philosophers.  Aside  from  Thales,  of 
whose  ideas  very  little  is  known,  Milesian  cosmology 
took  as  its  datum  the  apparent  conflicts  between  natural 
elements,  such  as  heat  and  cold,  or  winter  and  summer. 
Both  Anaximander  and  Anaximenes  commenced  their 
solutions  of  the  problem  by  reducing  all  strife,  and  in  fact 
all  movement,  to  the  interaction  of  two  opposing  bodies 
or  tendencies.  And  Heraclitus  was  true  to  the  Ionian  tra- 
dition in  starting  his  system  with  the  thesis  that  the 
world  is  in  a  continual  state  of  war.  Greek  philosophy, 

34  Maine,  Early  History  of  Institutions,  chaps,  ix,  x,  notices  the  pre- 
dominance of  rules  of  procedure  (cf.  "adjective  law,"  Holland,  Juris- 
prudence, 9th  ed.,  p.  337,  n.  2)  over  rules  of  substance  or  definitions  of 
rights  in  the  Twelve  Tables,  and  generally  in  primitive  codes.  With  this 
view  Pollock  apparently  agrees,  Intro,  to  Ancient  Law,  xvii. 

Z  18  ] 


EARLY  VIEWS  OF  THE  WORLD 

like  Greek  law,  had  its  point  of  departure  in  a  desire  to 
escape  from  conditions  of  disorder. 

The  first  philosophers  had  observed  that  in  this  osten- 
sible confusion  there  were  traces  of  regular  activity,  which 
they  undertook  to  explain.  But  instead  of  developing  the 
idea  of  a  determined  sequence  of  events  or  mechanical 
causation,  they  kept  the  apparent  strife  and  introduced 
regularity  in  the  form  of  an  ex  post  facto  readjustment. 
Anaximander's  opposites  are  represented  as  bound  to  do 
justice  to  each  other  for  all  unjust  encroachments,  and 
Heraclitus  had  the  same  idea  in  mind  when  he  said  that 
if  the  sun  (fire)  oversteps  his  measures,  "the  Erinyes,  the 
assistants  of  Justice,  will  find  him  out."  Regularity  there- 
fore was  a  retroactive  justice,  a  compensation  for  previous 
irregularity  by  subsequent  irregularity  in  the  opposite 
direction;  and  physical  law,  like  the  principles  that  gov- 
erned society,  was  a  procedure  according  to  which  irregu- 
larity was  made  regular.  In  both  cases  the  compensation 
was  not  primarily  the  restoration  of  an  equilibrium,  but 
an  opposite  irregularity. 

It  would  be  absurd  to  suppose  that  the  existence  of 
regularity  in  the  actions  of  society  caused  the  discovery 
of  regularity  in  the  natural  world.  But  when  Thales  and 
his  successors  observed  the  uniform  occurrence  of  certain 
physical  processes,  they  explained  them  by  extending  to 
them  the  concepts  already  in  use  for  analogous  processes 
of  society.  Men's  ideas  of  the  external  world  have  com- 
monly been  conditioned  by  their  knowledge  of  themselves ; 
and  it  was  surely  a  memorable  advance  to  think  of  the 
world  in  terms  of  known  human  activity  instead  of  the 
imagined  behavior  of  mythical  divinities.  Moreover  in 
the  infancy  of  speculation,  human  beings  were  regarded 
as  kith  and  kin  to  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  it  was  taken 

E  19  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

for  granted  that  what  was  true  of  one  part  was  also  true 
for  the  others.  All  through  presocratic  inquiry,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  the  Pythagorean  philosophy,  there 
ran  the  assumption  that  the  principle,  no  matter  what  it 
was  conceived  to  be,  worked  in  human  beings  just  as 
it  did  in  all  the  materials  of  the  world.  It  involved  no 
metaphor,  no  figure  of  speech,  to  apply  the  attributes 
of  mankind  to  the  objects  of  the  physical  world. 

7.  The  idea  of  the  world  as  lawful  and  regular  appears 
therefore  as  the  motif  of  the  earliest  philosophy,  and  we 
would  naturally  expect  its  authors  to  be  interested  in  those 
regions  of  nature  where  these  characteristics  were  most 
obviously  manifested.  This  is  exactly  what  we  do  find,  if 
we  may  put  even  a  little  trust  in  the  doxographical  tra- 
dition which  grew  up  around  the  first  philosophers;  for 
according  to  this  tradition,  the  main  object  of  investiga- 
tion in  the  Milesian  School  was  the  phenomena  of  the 
heavens,  where  the  periodic  recurrence  of  events  is  most 
striking  and  to  which  superficial  terrestrial  changes  may 
frequently  be  traced.  Problems  that  would  now  form  the 
subject-matter  of  astronomy  and  meteorology  seem  to  have 
been  predominant  in  the  speculation  of  the  first  philoso- 
phers; and  their  solutions  of  these  problems,  always  by 
means  of  cyclical  motions,  are  sufficient  evidence  that  they 
had  appreciated  natural  regularity. 

The  most  conclusive  single  indication  of  this  attitude 
is  the  well  known  story  that  Thales  predicted  the  eclipse 
of  the  sun,  which  has  been  calculated  for  the  year  585  b.c. 
The  historical  evidence  for  this  prediction  is  good,35  and 

35  It  comes  from  Herodotus  (I,  74),  and  from  Diogenes  Laertius  (I,  23), 
who  quotes  Eudemus,  Xenophanes,  and  Herodotus.  Xenophanes  may  well 
have  had  first-hand  information. 

C2o] 


EARLY  VIEWS  OF  THE  WORLD 

there  is  no  inherent  improbability  in  the  story.36  If  we 
accept  it,  we  must  suppose  that  Thales  had  learnt  the 
Babylonian  astronomical  tables,  and  that  means  that  the 
first  Greek  philosopher  was  concerned  with  the  recurrence 
of  celestial  phenomena.  Tradition  also  connects  the  names 
of  Thales'  successors  with  other  astronomical  achieve- 
ments, but  the  evidence  here  is  insufficient  to  do  more  than 
strengthen  the  probability  that  the  Milesian  inquirers 
were  versed  in  the  science  of  the  heavens,  from  which 
they  appear  to  have  discovered  the  general  suggestion  of 
natural  regularity. 

Such  information  as  these  investigators  had  was  a  new 
thing,  or  at  least  it  was  used  in  a  way  that  made  it  a  new 
thing.  It  was  a  different  kind  of  knowledge  from  any  that 
had  heretofore  been  in  the  possession  of  their  countrymen ; 
it  rested  on  empirical  facts  which  gave  it  a  credibility  such 
as  the  traditional  saga  never  had.  It  was  more  like  the 
practical  knowledge  of  a  ship-builder  or  a  goldsmith,  who 
knew  quite  exactly  the  effect  of  a  hammer-stroke;  only 
it  did  not  involve  the  variability  of  materials  which  was 
always  present  in  the  handicrafts.   It  was  therefore  a 

36  We  know  that  the  Babylonians  predicted  eclipses  on  the  basis  of  cycles 
discovered  from  observations  covering  hundreds  of  years :  Milhaud, 
Nouvelles  Etudes,  p.  91,  Burnet,  Gk.  Phil.,  p.  7.  We  know  also  that  Mesopo- 
tamian  influence  was  felt  in  Lydia  at  least  as  early  as  Gyges,  who  died 
about  650  B.C.:  Cylinder  Inscription  E  of  Ashurbanipal,  in  Hall,  The 
Ancient  History  of  the  Near  East,  pp.  504,  505.  With  Lydia  Miletus  was  in 
close  relations :  Hall,  The  Oldest  Civilization  of  Greece,  pp.  275-7,  Maspero, 
Histoire  Ancienne,  Les  Empires,  p.  426.  So  that  Thales  might  have  learnt 
his  astronomical  data  from  the  Babylonians  by  way  of  Lydia.  There  is 
also  other  evidence  of  the  transmission  of  Assyrian  and  Babylonian  cul- 
ture to  Ionia;  Hall,  The  Ancient  History  of  the  Near  East,  p.  533: 
Hogarth,  Ionia  and  the  East;  King,  "Sennacherib  and  the  Ionians"  in 
Journal  of  Hellenic  Studies,  XXX.  But  the  statement  of  Miss  Clerke,  s.v. 
"Astronomy:  History"  in  Encyc.  Brit.,  11th  ed.,  that  "A  Babylonian  sage 
named  Berossus  founded  a  school  about  640  B.C.  in  the  island  of  Cos,  and 
perhaps  counted  Thales  of  Miletus  (c.  639-548)  among  his  pupils"  appears 
to  involve  false  chronology ;  Berossus  is  said  to  have  been  contemporary 
with  Antiochus  II  (250  b.c). 

C21  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

definite  and  empirical  knowledge  of  uniform  processes, 
which  might  well  be  dignified"  by  the  name  of  science. 
And  the  possessors  of  this  scientific  information  in  regard 
to  the  heavens  would  naturally  be  interested  in  other  sub- 
jects in  which  similar  knowledge  might  be  gained.  So  we 
find  that  Greek  tradition  ascribes  considerable  versatility 
in  geometry  to  some  of  the  early  philosophers,  and  the 
Pythagoreans  developed  arithmetic  and  harmonics.37  With 
the  exception  of  Xenophanes,  who  had  a  religious  rather 
than  a  scientific  turn  of  mind,  all  the  great  figures  of  the 
presocratic  period  outside  of  the  Eleatic  School  may  be 
connected  with  some  scientific  interests,  although  in  the 
case  of  Heraclitus  that  interest  was  slight;  and  it  was  part 
of  the  service  rendered  by  the  Eleatics  that  they  did  not 
develop  theories  from  sense  experience,  but  argued  the 
validity  of  their  propositions  without  any  appeal  to 
observed  data.  We  should  then  think  of  the  Milesians 
and  Pythagoras,  the  originators  of  Greek  philosophy,  not 
as  mere  speculators  about  the  stars,  the  clouds,  and  the 
world  in  general,  but  rather  as  men  in  the  possession  of 
certain  new  and  marvellous  principles  of  natural  activity, 
which  meant  a  revolution  in  current  views  of  the  world, 
and  which  they  had  to  interpret  to  the  best  of  their  abili- 
ties in  order  to  put  something  in  place  of  the  old  discarded 
mythology. 

To  men  who  knew  the  movements  of  the  stars  and  saw 
the  operation  of  uniform  activity  in  nature,  the  old  tales 
of  personal  gods  and  goddesses,  who  managed  the  world 
to  their  liking  and  to  whom  men  in  their  ignorance  paid 
homage,  must  have  seemed  such  ridiculous  fiction  as 
hardly  to  deserve  attention,  and  yet  so  subversive  of  a 
proper  conception  of  human  life  as  to  be  degrading.  The 

37  See  below,  Part  II,  chap.  n. 


EARLY  VIEWS  OF  THE  WORLD 

young  science  could  not  fail  sooner  or  later  to  conflict 
with  the  traditional  views,  and  that  opposition  began  at 
least  as  early  as  Xenophanes.  He  denied  the  old  anthro- 
pomorphic gods  altogether  and  condemned  the  effete  cul- 
ture which  had  grown  up  on  the  background  of  "those 
fictions  of  the  men  of  old"  amid  the  luxury  of  Lydian 
culture.  Heraclitus  too  preached  against  the  defilements 
of  current  religious  practices.  Indeed,  with  the  exception 
of  the  Milesians,  of  whom  we  cannot  speak  for  lack  of 
evidence,  there  was  no  early  Greek  philosopher  of  impor- 
tance who  did  not  attempt  to  give  a  new  and  better 
meaning  to  life  through  his  scientifc  investigations  and 
philosophy. 

8.  It  will  thus  be  best  to  think  of  Greek  philosophy  as 
starting  with  the  appreciation  that  the  regular  sequences 
of  nature,  such  as  the  phases  of  the  heavenly  bodies  or  the 
seasonal  changes  in  the  elements,  were  evidences  that 
physical  events  were  not  caused  by  some  divine  caprice 
but  proceeded  with  a  regularity  similar  to  that  which 
characterized  the  actions  of  men  in  political  societies.  Yet 
as  not  all  human  actions  could  be  regulated  by  law,38  so 
in  nature  many  things  seemed  to  happen  without  order; 
and  it  was  not  until  later,  when  the  concept  of  natural 
regularity  had  been  extended,  that  the  idea  of  a  cosmos 
or  ordered  universe  arose.  And  even  then  so  many  events 
remained  inexplicable  that  a  goddess  or  force  called  Chance 
had  to  be  assumed  as  their  cause.39  But  the  discovery  of 

38  Customary  law  could  not  regulate  all  actions,  and  the  codes  did  not 
embrace  all  of  customary  law.  Even  the  Twelve  Tables  "did  not  purport  to 
include  the  whole  of  recognized  customary  law." — Sir  F.  Pollock,  note  A 
to  chap,  i  of  Maine's  Ancient  Law. 

39  cf.  Allegre,  La  Deesse  Grecque  Tyche,  I,  chap.  vi.  Probably  cosmos 
did  not  connote  a  completely  ordered  universe,  except  possibly  to  the 
Pythagoreans.  On  this  point  Professor  Bowman  has  written  me  as  follows  : 
"The  genesis  of  the  cosmos-idea  appears  to  me  to  be  the  substitution  of  a 
single  world  for  a  plurality  of  worlds,  the  single  world  not  necessarily 

[233 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

regularity  in  nature  was  significant  in  spite  of  its  incom- 
pleteness; for  it  not  only  gave  the  impulse  to  Greek 
science,  it  also  brought  a  new  conception  of  human  life. 
On  the  physical  side,  man,  as  a  part  of  the  world,  was  now 
seen  to  be  subject  to  the  regularities  of  his  world,  and  the 
conditions  of  his  existence  were  determined  by  the  opera- 
tion of  inexorable  materials,  rather  than  by  the  favor  or 
displeasure  of  susceptible  divinities.  On  the  human  side, 
man  was  rid  of  the  interference  of  the  gods  in  his  own 
inner  life,  and  was  therefore  free  to  develop  his  ideas  of 
individual  worth  and  of  social  sanctions  for  conduct. 

a  completely  ordered  one.  The  points  in  my  argument  are:  (l)  while  it  is 
true  that  the  cosmos-conception  is  later,  the  plural  conception  of  icocrfwi 
is  as  early  as  Anaximander;  (2)  with  the  denial  of  the  direipov,  e.g.  by 
Aristotle,  the  Kbe/xot  tumble  together  into  a  k6<t[ms,  i.e.  one  world  takes  the 
place  of  a  number.  But  this  does  not  imply  that  the  one  world  is  completely 
ordered ;  it  includes  ri>xn  and  rb  ffvupefiTjicbs.  In  a  word  the  idea  of  unity 
seems  to  me  more  fundamental  than  that  of  the  degree  of  order  in  the 
cosmos.  The  transition  is  that  from  a  point  of  view  from  which  icbfffitos 
is  not  synonymous  with  t6  8\ov,  rb  vav,  to  a  point  of  view  from  which  it  is." 


CHAPTER  II 

THALES,  ANAXIMANDER,  ANAXIMENES 

1.  The  philosophical  attitude,  which  was  contrasted  in 
the  previous  chapter  with  the  traditional  views  of  the 
world,  had  its  origin  in  Miletus,  a  Greek  city  on  the 
western  coast  of  Asia  Minor,  in  the  district  called  Ionia. 
This  district  consisted  of  seaboard  and  adjacent  islands, 
and  its  position  naturally  favored  commercial  enterprise 
both  on  land  and  by  sea.  By  commerce  the  Ionians  were 
brought  into  touch  with  many  other  peoples  of  the  Medi- 
terranean area  as  well  as  with  the  great  power  of  Babylon, 
and  these  associations  must  have  stimulated  their  native 
temperament.  At  any  rate  to  the  Ionians  are  due  the 
earliest  literary  development  of  the  Greeks,  many  ad- 
vances in  the  arts  and  in  trade,  as  well  as  the  beginnings 
of  science  and  philosophy. 

2.  The  individuals  whose  names  are  connected  with  the 
origin  of  philosophy  were  Thales,  Anaximander,  and 
Anaximenes,  three  natives  of  Miletus.  The  date  of  Thales 
can  be  roughly  determined  by  the  eclipse  which  he  pre- 
dicted and  which  has  been  calculated  for  the  year  585  b.c. 
Apparently  he  wrote  nothing  and  all  our  information 
concerning  him  comes  from  tradition,  which  has  been  pre- 
served by  Herodotus,  Aristotle,  and  later  historians.  We 
have  already  seen  that  Thales  probably  knew  the  Baby- 
lonian astronomical  tables,  and  he  was  also  credited  with 
the  introduction  of  certain  Egyptian  rules  of  mensura- 

C253 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

tion,  by  which  he  measured  the  distance  of  ships  at  sea 
and  the  height  of  pyramids.  Furthermore  he  was  active  in 
the  political  life  of  his  city,  and  became  known  as  one  of 
the  Seven  Wise  Men  of  Greece. 

For  his  philosophical  and  scientific  views  we  have  to 
depend  in  the  last  resort  on  the  meager  tradition  preserved 
by  Aristotle,  from  which  only  two  points  of  importance 
stand  out :  ( l )  water  is  the  material  cause  of  all  things, 
and  the  earth  floats  on  water;1  (2)  all  things  are  full  of 
gods,  and  the  magnet  is  alive,  for  it  has  the  power  of 
moving  iron.2  We  must  remember  that  these  views  are 
expressed  in  the  words  of  Aristotle,  and  the  notion  of  a 
"material  cause"  in  particular  must  have  been  foreign 
to  the  mind  of  Thales.  How  he  believed  water  could  ex- 
plain the  world  is  a  matter  of  conjecture,  but  it  is  probable 
that  he  had  in  mind  such  processes  as  the  silting  of  rivers 
and  harbors,  subterranean  springs,  dew,  mist,  rain,  and 
evaporation,  in  which  water  seems  to  appear  from  other 
things  and  to  be  transformed  into  other  things.  The  re- 
mark about  gods  we  shall  notice  later. 

3.  Anaximander  was  probably  born  about  610  b.c,  but 
no  doubt  the  later  tradition  is  right  in  making  his  philoso- 
phy follow  that  of  Thales.  He  is  represented  as  having 
been  the  first  to  construct  a  map,  and  he  conducted  a 
colony,  probably  to  the  shores  of  the  Pontus.  He  wrote 
a  work  in  which  he  set  down  his  views  of  the  world ;  and 
although  only  one  fragment  now  remains,  the  whole  must 
have  been  in  the  hands  of  Theophrastus,  Aristotle's  suc- 
cessor, who  collated  the  opinions  of  the  early  philosophers. 
Our  information  regarding  Anaximander  is  therefore 
more  definite  and  detailed  than  in  regard  to  Thales. 

1  Met.  I,  3.  983  b  21  ;  De  Coelo  II,  13.  294  a  28. 

2  De  An.  I,  5.  405  a  19,  411  a  7. 

[    ^1 


THALES,  ANAXIMANDER,  ANAXIMENES 

In  his  attempt  to  explain  the  world,  Anaximander 
apparently  started  with  processes  like  the  alternation  of 
day  and  night,  or  winter  and  summer,  in  which  there  seem 
to  be  two  things  of  opposite  qualities;  and  he  probably 
thought  that  the  most  general  case  of  this  sort  is  to  be 
found  in  the  hot  and  the  cold.  From  two  things  of  oppo- 
site qualities,  that  alternate,  it  was  an  easy  step  to  the 
opposition  between  the  two  things;  and  Anaximander 
believed  that  opposites  "opposed"  one  another,  so  that  the 
alternation  was  the  encroachment  of  one  on  the  other.  Any 
such  encroachment  was  of  course  "unjust"  to  one  oppo- 
site, and  if  continued,  would  result  in  entirely  annihilat- 
ing it.  The  alternation  meant  that  nature  did  not  allow 
this  to  take  place,  and  that  there  was  a  Justice  or  (as  we 
should  say)  a  law  of  regularity  in  the  world,  which  com- 
pensated for  each  encroachment  by  a  subsequent  en- 
croachment in  the  opposite  direction.  Every  advance  of 
one  opposite  would  necessitate  an  additional  supply  of  it, 
and  Anaximander  accordingly  posited  a  boundless  stock 
from  which  the  opposites  were  replenished;  as  this  stock 
must  contain  all  the  opposites,  it  could  not  be  identical 
with  any  one  of  them  and  no  name  except  Boundless  could 
be  applied  to  it.3  The  process  by  which  opposites  appeared 
out  of  the  Boundless  Anaximander  called  "separating 
off,"  by  which  he  no  doubt  meant  that  the  Boundless 
detached  a  part  of  itself  and  this  part  in  turn  differen- 
tiated itself  into  the  hot  and  the  cold,  so  that  separation 
from  the  Boundless  involved  both  a  quantitative  and  a 
qualitative  definition.  He  thought  of  the  hot  as  a  ring 
of  flame  surrounding  a  cold  center  composed  of  earth  and 
air,  the  flame  of  course  constituting  the  substance  of  the 
heavenly  bodies;  and  probably  he  believed  that  the  hot 

3  Simplic.  Phys.  24,  13  DFV,  p.  13. 

C  27  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

and  the  cold  set  up  a  motion  analogous  to  an  eddy  or 
vortex,  in  which  heavy  things  tend  toward  the  center  and 
light  things  toward  the  periphery.4 

4.  The  third  Milesian  philosopher  was  Anaximenes. 
Of  his  date  we  can  only  say  that  tradition  made  him  fol- 
low Anaximander.  He  wrote  a  book  which  was  probably 
known  to  the  later  historians  of  philosophy,  although  only 
one  or  two  fragments  of  it  are  extant.  Thales  and  Anaxi- 
mander were  distinguished  as  inventors,  public  men,  and 
original  investigators;  Anaximenes  on  the  other  hand 
appears  only  as  a  consistent  theorist,  and  he  illustrates  the 
fact  that  science  advances  by  theoretical  interpretation 
as  well  as  by  discovering  new  facts. 

Anaximenes  held  that  the  diverse  elements  of  nature, 
such  as  fire,  clouds,  water,  earth,  and  stones,  represented 
merely  different  degrees  of  density  of  one  and  the  same 
substance ;  and  he  identified  this  universal  substance  with 
air.  "When  this  is  dilated  into  a  rarer  form,  it  becomes 
fire,  while  on  the  other  hand  air  that  is  condensed  forms 
winds;  moreover  from  air  cloud  is  produced  by  felting, 
and  if  this  process  goes  further,  it  gives  water,  still  further 
earth,  and  the  greatest  condensation  of  all  is  found  in 
stones."5  This  theory,  in  its  simplicity  of  conception, 
marks  an  advance  over  the  thought  of  Anaximander ;  and 
in  reducing  all  differences  between  elements  to  differences 
-of  density,  it  put  science  on  the  way  to  purely  quantitative 
determinations.  In  his  conception  of  air  Anaximenes  in- 
cluded mist,  vapor,  wind,  and  breath;  and  the  fragment 
of  his  work  which  reads:  "Just  as  our  soul,  which  is  air, 
sustains   us,    so  breath   and   air   encompass   the    whole 

4  Ps.-Plut.  Strom.  2  DFV,  p.  13.  cf.  Heidel  in  Proceedings  of  the  American 
Academy  XLVIII,  686,  and  Classical  Philology  I,  279.  For  other  scientific 
theories  of  Anaximander  see  below,  pp.  252-5. 

3  Hipp.  Ref.  I,  7  DFV,  p.  18. 

C283 


THALES,  ANAXIMANDER,  ANAXIMENES 

world,"6  shows  that  he  thought  of  air  as  the  life-giving 
breath  of  the  world. 

5.  We  have  reviewed  the  bare  outlines  of  the  Milesian 
systems,  so  far  as  they  are  of  philosophical  interest;  and 
what  we  have  now  to  do  is  to  attempt  an  appreciation  of 
their  novelty.  One  point  of  contrast  with  preceding 
thought  stands  out  immediately:  whereas  the  traditional 
views  had  connected  an  event  with  a  god,  the  Milesians 
connected  events  with  one  another.  For  example,  Anaxi- 
mander  related  the  appearance  of  the  hot  (e.g.  in  summer) 
with  the  appearance  of  cold  (e.g.  in  winter)  ;  and  Anaxi- 
menes  related  the  breathing  of  human  beings  to  the  activ- 
ity of  cosmic  air.  Such  relations  must  have  involved  a 
rudimentary  appreciation  of  what  we  mean  by  natural 
regularity. 

But  apparently  this  appreciation  did  not  necessitate  the 
creation  of  a  new  set  of  scientific  or  "natural"  categories. 
No  new  categories  are  discoverable  in  our  sources  of  infor- 
mation about  the  Milesians,  and  these  same  sources 
indicate  that  the  first  philosophers  continued  to  employ 
the  most  important  of  the  traditional  categories,  namely, 
divinity.  Aristotle  and  several  of  the  doxographers  report 
that  the  first  philosophers  either  said  their  principles 
were  gods  or  ascribed  to  them  such  attributes  of  divinity 
as  eternal  existence  and  indestructibility.7  We  must  then 
endeavor  to  understand  this  point. 

The  idea  of  nature,  even  in  the  vague  form  in  which  it 
was  implied  in  the  Milesian  systems,  would  immediately 
entail  the  discarding  of  the  old  gods  who  acted  as  they 
chose  and  obeyed  no  laws — the  gods,  I  mean,  of  literature ; 

6  Aetius  I,  3,  4  DFV,  p.  21. 

7  Arist.  Phys.  Ill,  4.  203  b  14;  for  the  testimony  of  Aetius  and  Cicero  see 
Diels  Dox.  p.  301,  21  and  p.  531,  4-6,  17,  18.  Also  Simplic.  Phys.  465,  13  d 
RP  17  b. 

C293 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

but  it  would  not  necessarily  hold  the  same  fate  for  the 
popular  gods  of  nature,  who  already  were  conceived  as 
more  or  less  settled  in  their  habits.  These  divinities  were 
closely  associated  with  elements  or  processes  of  nature — 
Ge  or  Gaia  was  both  the  earth  and  the  earth-spirit;  like- 
wise Poseidon  was  the  sea  and  the  sea-god ;  and  the  charac- 
teristics of  the  natural  elements  were  the  attributes  of  the 
god  of  that  element.  The  philosophers  apparently  thought 
of  these  elements  in  much  the  same  way  as  popular  religion 
did,  that  is,  as  possessed  of  divine  powers.8 

The  idea  of  divinity  no  doubt  included  various  conno- 
tations, but  we  have  previously  seen  that  in  Greece  at  the 
time  now  under  discussion  the  fundamental  element  in 
this  idea  was  that  of  power.  The  power  of  a  god,  however, 
was  different  from  the  power  of  a  man  or  beast  in  that  it 
was  not  derived  and  restricted,  but  original  and  free.  A 
god  was  a  being  that  could  originate  action ;  and  by  using 
the  epithet  of  divinity,  the  cosmologists  must  have  meant 
that  their  material  principles  had  in  themselves  the  power 
of  spontaneous  movement.  What  Thales  and  his  successors 
were  investigating  was  the  regular  changes  in  the  world; 
and  when  they  found  a  substance,  such  as  water  or  air, 
which  seemed  to  take  different  forms  without  the  aid  of 
anything  else  and  whose  presence  caused  other  things  to 
undergo  transformations,  they  called  it  divine  in  order 
to  bring  out  the  fact  that  it  had  this  very  power  of  spon- 
taneous change.  Aristotle  criticized  these  early  thinkers 

8  Burnet,  Gk.  Phil.  p.  29,  says :  "No  one  who  has  once  realised  the  utterly 
secular  character  of  Ionian  civilisation  will  ever  be  tempted  to  look  for 
the  origins  of  Greek  philosophy  in  primitive  cosmogonies."  I  agree — indeed 
my  thesis  is  that  philosophy  arose  from  an  appreciation  of  natural  regu- 
larity. But  Mr.  Burnet's  notion  of  Ionian  civilization  seems  extreme ; 
Xenophanes  and  Heraclitus  indicate  plainly  that  the  Ionians  had  a  religion 
and  were  not  "utterly  secular."  I  am  now  maintaining  only  that  Ionian 
science  arose  without  the  invention  of  a  new  set  of  categories. 

C303 


THALES,  ANAXIMANDER,  ANAXIMENES 

for  taking  no  account  of  a  cause  of  change — "the  material 
substrate,"  he  says,  "is  surely  not  the  agent  which  effects 
its  own  transformation"  {Met.  I,  3.  984  a  2 1 ) .  But  he  had 
arrived  at  a  distinction  between  the  matter  out  of  which 
things  are  made,  and  the  agent  by  which  things  are  made ; 
and  that  distinction  was  wholly  foreign  to  the  Milesian 
point  of  view.  The  traditional  notion  of  the  world  had 
been  that  every  part  of  it  had  its  Own  god  who  produced 
its  transformations,  and  when  the  personality  of  these 
gods  was  given  up,  the  elements  were  conceived  as  trans- 
forming themselves.  If  the  term  animism  is  used  to  de- 
scribe the  doctrine  that  things  have  spirits  or  gods  in 
them,  then  the  traditional  Greek  attitude  may  be  called 
animistic;  but  by  the  same  token  the  philosophic  attitude 
may  not  be  so  described  because  it  made  no  distinction 
between  the  spirit  or  god  and  the  thing.  The  term  hylo- 
zoism  has  sometimes  been  employed  to  differentiate  this 
philosophic  attitude  from  the  earlier  one,  and  there  is  no 
harm  in  this  usage  provided  it  does  not  connote  a  separa- 
tion of  the  power  from  the  thing.  In  other  words,  for  the 
early  Greek  philosophers,  the  natural  elements  were  as 
active  as  they  had  been  with  personal  gods  in  them,  but 
the  separate  personality  of  the  gods  was  discarded. 

The  difficulty,  however,  in  the  reports  about  the  Mile- 
sian thinkers  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  had  more  gods  than 
one.  How  could  water  be  the  cause  of  change  in  other 
things,  if  these  things  changed  themselves  *?  And  if  Anaxi- 
mander's  Boundless  was  divine  (it  was  described  as 
eternal  and  ageless),  what  was  the  sense  of  saying  that 
the  innumerable  worlds  which  arose  out  of  it  were  gods'? 
The  explanation  of  this  doctrine  also  is  to  be  found  in 
the  prevalent  idea  of  divinities.  It  was  a  commonplace 
of  Greek  religion  to  have  a  supreme  god  and  inferior 

c  31  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

gods,  who  owed  their  position  and  prerogatives  to  their 
superior.  It  would  therefore  be  perfectly  natural  for 
Thales  and  his  successors  to  have  a  similar  hierarchy — a 
primary  cause  or  substance  and  begotten  causes.  The 
Stromateis,  in  describing  Anaximander's  cosmology,  says : 
"Something  capable  of  begetting  hot  and  cold  was  sepa- 
rated off  from  the  eternal  at  the  creation  of  this  world, 
and  from  this  there  grew  up  a  sphere  of  flame.  .  .  ." 
{Strom.  2  DFV,  p.  13.)  The  operation  of  the  first  prin- 
ciple was  a  production  out  of  itself,  and  each  derivative 
had  some  spontaneous  activity  from  its  parent  stuff. 

This  interpretation  of  the  Milesian  cosmology  throws 
some  light  on  a  question  that  has  been  much  discussed: 
whether  the  principles  were  conceived  of  as  the  original 
material  out  of  which  things  were  created  in  a  past  pro- 
cess, or  as  the  present  permeating  cause  of  growth  and 
change.9  There  is  evidence  for  both  of  these  interpreta- 
tions, and  that  would  seem  to  mean  that  the  principles 
were  thought  of  in  both  ways.  There  will  be  nothing 
strange  in  the  union  of  these  two  functions,  if  we  think 
of  the  principles  as  divinities,  each  of  which  passed  on  to 
his  descendants  some  of  his  spontaneous  power  with  his 
substance.  I  believe  that  the  ideas  of  material  substrate, 
permanent  latentTTorce,  and  first  cause  were  not  distin- 
guished in  the  first  Greek  philosophy,  but  rather  formed 
aspects  of  the  various  cosmological  principles.  According 
to  this  view  of  the  world,  the  material  out  of  which  differ- 

9  Woodbridge,  "The  Dominant  Conception  of  the  Earliest  Gk.  Phil."  in 
Philosophical  Rev.  X;  Heidel,  "Qualitative  Change  in  Presocratic  Philoso- 
phy" in  Archiv  f.  Gesch.  d.  Phil.  XIX;  Lovejoy,  "The  Meaning  of  0&rts 
in  the  Greek  Physiologers"  in  Philosophical  Review  XVIII,  4.  Much  work 
has  been  done  on  the  meaning  of  0&m,  especially  by  Burnet,  p.  10,  Heidel 
in  Proc.  Am.  Acad.  Arts  and  Sciences  XLV,  No.  4,  Beardslee,  The  Use  of 
<f>T2I2  in  Fifth-Century  Greek  Literature ;  but  there  is  no  good  evidence 
that  the  Milesians  used  the  word. 

£323 


THALES,  ANAXIMANDER,  ANAXIMENES 

ent  elements  have  been  formed  still  lives  in  them,  and 
by  virtue  of  its  divine,  active  force,  these  particular  ele- 
ments are  now  transformed  and  changed. 

Perhaps,  in  this  connection,  not  enough  has  been  made 
of  the  fact  that  the  principle  is  often  described  as  final 
as  well  as  original.  In  a  passage  of  Simplicius,  which 
may  give  Anaximander's  own  words,  we  read:  "And  into 
that  from  which  things  take  their  rise,  they  pass  away  once 
more,  as  is  ordained"  (Pkys.  24  DFV,  p.  13).  Xenophanes 
held  that  "all  things  come  from  earth  and  in  earth  all 
things  end"  (frag.  27),  though  earth  itself  is  probably 
but  a  passing  transformation  of  the  principle.  Heraclitus, 
a  later  Ionian,  may  quite  possibly  have  believed  that 
Fire,  his  principle,  would  one  day  "come  upon  and  lay 
hold  of  all  things,"  although  Burnet  has  argued  against 
such  an  interpretation  of  the  passage.10  So  too  Diogenes 
of  Apollonia,  who  carried  on  the  Milesian  tradition,  held 
that  all  differentiations  return  to  the  unity  from  which 
they  have  arisen  (frag.  2,  DFV,  p.  334,  18-20).  In  general, 
Aristotle  thought  of  the  early  principles  in  this  way,  as 
is  evinced  by  the  following  passage  from  the  Metaphysics, 
which  I  render  literally:  "Most  of  the  first  philosophers 
thought  the  principles  of  all  things  were  in  the  form  of 
matter  alone;  for  that  out  of  which  all  things  are  and 
from  which,  as  the  first,  they  come  into  being,  and  into 
which,  as  the  last,  they  pass  away  .  .  .  this  they  say  is 
the  element  and  this  the  principle  of  things"  (Met.  I,  3. 
983  b  7).  If  Aristotle  is  right  in  this  view,  as  I  believe 
he  is,  the  Milesians  held  that  the  present  world  is  a  stage 
between  the  original  simple  state  of  the  principle  and  the 
later  condition  in  which  the  principle  will  receive  its 

10  Heraclitus,  frag.  B  26-D  66 ;  Burnet,  p.  158.  Zeller,  Diels,  and  Gomperz 
have  held  that  Heraclitus  believed  in  a  general  conflagration. 

C  33  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

transformations  back  into  itself.11  The  principle  thus  is 
the  substance  which  created  things  out  of  itself  and  by  its 
presence  in  them  keeps  them  in  a  state  of  change  until  they 
pass  away  into  it  again. 

Upon  such  an  interpretation  of  the  Milesian  cosmolo- 
gists,  we  are  entitled  to  say  that  they  were  interested  in 
the  reality  of  the  world  from  a  scientific  point  of  view. 
They  believed  that  the  strife  observable  in  nature  did 
not  tell  the  whole  story.  The  appreciation  of  regular  activ- 
ity in  nature  at  once  removed  the  possibility  of  unrestrained 
deities  governing  the  world  according  to  their  personal 
whims,  and  the  first  philosophers  therefore  asked  them- 
selves what  part  of  the  world  could  produce  these  regular 
sequences.  They  took  it  for  granted  that,  if  there  was 
such  a  cause  of  change  in  the  world,  it  would  explain  not 
only  the  apparent  transformations,  but  also  the  origin  of 
the  different  natural  elements.  In  other  words,  they  sup- 
posed that  causation  was  explicable  only  by  reference  to 
creation.  Their  problem  was  accordingly  the  quest  for 
a  substance,  which,  through  a  process  of  productions  out 
of  itself,  was  still  active  in  its  various  derivatives.  And 
in  the  case  of  Anaximander's  Boundless,  at  least,  the 
search  for  such  a  substance  led  to  the  first  postulation  of 
a  "scientific  object,"  that  is,  an  object  not  directly  per- 
ceived, but  inferred  as  the  permanent  active  condition  of 
perceived  objects.12 

11  Aristotle  himself,  perhaps  metaphysically  a  little  "off  his  guard,"  says 
in  Eth.  Nic.  X,  3,  5 :  "it  seems  that  it  is  not  possible  for  anything  to  come 
out  of  just  anything,  but  what  a  thing  comes  out  of,  into  that  it  is  re- 
solved." He  is  speaking  of  pleasure  and  pain. 

12  cf .  Whitehead,  The  Principles  of  Natural  Knowledge,  p.  93. 


CHAPTER  III 

PYTHAGORAS  AND  XENOPHANES 

l.  After  the  first  three  philosophers  of  Miletus  there 
came  three  other  thinkers  who  were  not  natives  of  that 
city,  and  whose  thought  was  so  charged  with  individuality 
that  they  are  usually  treated  separately  in  the  history  of 
philosophy.  They  were  Pythagoras,  Xenophanes,  and 
Heraclitus.  And  while  they  were  unquestionably  individu- 
alities, there  are,  I  believe,  two  reasons  for  thinking  of 
them  together. 

In  the  first  place,  they  appear  to  have  taken  the  Mile- 
sian doctrines  as  the  bases  for  their  own  particular  sys- 
tems. Samos  (the  early  home  of  Pythagoras),  Colophon 
(the  native  city  of  Xenophanes),  and  Ephesus  (where 
Heraclitus  was  born  and  lived)  were,  like  Miletus,  cen- 
ters of  Ionian  culture;  and  there  is  every  reason  to  suppose 
that  the  philosophical  views  and  discoveries  of  the  Mile- 
sian investigators  should  have  become  quickly  current  in 
the  district,  which  was  intellectually  homogeneous.  Fur- 
thermore we  shall  see  that  each  of  these  later  philosophers 
constructed  his  system  around  the  central  notion  of  regu- 
lar, cosmological  opposites,  which  had  played  so  large 
a  role  in  the  thought  of  the  last  two  Milesians.  This  is 
especially  and  obviously  true  of  Pythagoras  and  Hera- 
clitus; and  the  "earth  and  water"  of  Xenophanes  were 
no  doubt  an  illustration  of  the  same  idea.  Hence  the  doc- 

C  35  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

trines  of  these  three  men  were  Ionian  in  their  provenience 
and  Ionian  in  a  fundamental  point  of  view. 

The  second  reason  for  considering  them  together  is 
found  in  their  attitude  toward  religion.  The  Milesian 
cosmology,  at  least  as  we  now  know  it,  had  not  been 
developed  into  anything  that  might  legitimately  be  called 
religion,  although  it  undoubtedly  contained  an  implica- 
tion that  could  easily  be  so  developed.  It  was  characteristic 
of  the  thinkers  to  whom  we  are  now  turning  that  they 
definitely  included  religion  among  their  doctrines.  During 
their  lifetime  Greece  was  experiencing  a  revival  of  very 
primitive  religious  beliefs  in  the  form  of  mystery-cults, 
which  probably  came  from  Thrace.  From  our  own  stand- 
point, it  appears  as  if  the  new  Ionian  science  made  the  old 
gods  impossible,  only  to  be  confronted  with  the  more 
primitive  practices  of  the  Orphic  mysteries.  At  any  rate, 
in  the  time  of  Pythagoras,  Xenophanes,  and  Heraclitus, 
religion  must  have  been  a  matter  of  great  concern;  and 
certainly  each  of  them,  in  elaborating  his  own  philosophy, 
was  profoundly  affected  by  religious  considerations. 

Xenophanes  and  Heraclitus  are  outspoken  in  their  op- 
position to  the  traditional  theology,  and  the  whole  tenor 
of  Pythagoreanism  implies  a  similar  attitude.  Thus  these 
three  philosophers  were  alike  in  starting  with  Ionian 
science  and  opposing  the  teaching  of  the  poets;  but  they 
reacted  in  quite  different  ways  to  the  mysteries.  Pytha- 
goras accepted  many  of  the  principles  of  the  mystic  cults, 
and  attempted  to  incorporate  them  in  his  own  philosoph- 
ical system.  Xenophanes  is  reported  to  have  ridiculed  the 
mystical  doctrines  of  Epimenides  and  of  Pythagoras; 
and  that  is  in  keeping  with  his  role  of  satirist  and  with 
the  general  character  of  his  thought.  Heraclitus  roundly 
condemns  the  mysteries,  as  well  as  the  authors  of  the  tra- 

C36: 


PYTHAGORAS  AND  XENOPHANES 

ditional  views  about  the  gods ;  but  Heraclitus  had  a  weak- 
ness for  condemning  people,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  his 
view  of  the  soul  was  so  new  and  so  similar  to  the  mystical 
view  in  some  respects,  that  he  may  well  have  been  influ- 
enced by  the  latter.  Thus  these  three  thinkers  differed 
widely  in  their  religious  views,  as  shown  by  their  atti- 
tudes toward  the  mysteries;  but  they  were  similar  in  the 
more  fundamental  quality  of  a  definite  religious  side  to 
their  philosophy. 

2.  The  extraordinary  appeal  of  the  mystic  doctrine  lay 
in  its  reputed  purification  of  the  soul,  and  it  was  appar- 
ently this  notion  that  Pythagoras  took  as  the  central 
feature  of  his  teachings.  The  means  of  purification  in  the 
cults  was  a  ritual  or  celebration  in  which  the  soul  seemed 
to  lose  contact  with  the  body  under  the  influence  of  some 
strong  external  stimulus.  The  difference  between  the  pop- 
ular forms  of  mysticism  and  the  doctrine  of  Pythagoras 
arises  at  this  point;  for  the  philosopher  appears  to  have 
substituted  the  contemplation  of  the  heavens  (tkeoria), 
where  the  divine  operation  is  most  striking,  for  the  impos- 
ing ceremony  or  the  exciting  dances,  which  were  ordinarily 
used  to  induce  a  state  of  ecstasy.  It  is  obvious  that  this 
emotional  contemplation  of  celestial  phenomena  could 
easily  pass  over  into  speculation  about  the  nature  of  these 
phenomena,  and  it  was  no  doubt  in  this  way  that  the  prac- 
tice of  purification  in  the  Pythagorean  society  led  to  a 
philosophy  of  nature. 

Pythagoras  left  his  home  in  the  island  of  Samos,  prob- 
ably some  time  before  532  B.C.,  and  migrated  to  the  city 
of  Croton  in  southern  Italy,  where  he  founded  a  society, 
commonly  called  the  Pythagorean  Order,  which  came  to 
be  both  a  religious  and  a  scientific  organization.  The  mem- 
bers of  the  Order  were  reputed  to  have  a  double  set  of 

C  37  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

purificatory  rites,  one  for  the  body  and  one  for  the  soul, 
the  latter  consisting  of  philosophical  inquiry;1  and  the 
reward  held  out  for  faithful  performance  of  these  duties 
was  an  early  release  from  the  cycle  of  reincarnation,  so 
that  the  soul  could  "follow  god"  and  regain  the  divine 
estate  from  which  it  had  fallen.  There  was  thus  latent 
in  these  doctrines  not  merely  the  customary  bond  between 
morality  and  religion,  but  a  further  union  of  these  two 
with  philosophy.  Convictions  about  the  principle  which 
regulated  the  world  suggested  a  certain  human  attitude 
toward  that  principle,  since  men  were  a  part  of  the  world ; 
and  thus  arose  the  suggestion  that  philosophy  was  "a  way 
of  life."  It  is  sufficient  here  to  remark  that  as  early  as 
Pythagoras  Greek  philosophy  connoted  an  ethical  atti- 
tude and  expressly  attempted  to  satisfy  an  ethical  impulse. 
It  is  difficult  to  speak  even  in  terms  of  probability 
about  the  original  Pythagorean  view  of  the  world  and  its 
workings,  because  so  little  is  definitely  known  on  the  sub- 
ject. No  work  by  Pythagoras  is  mentioned  by  later  writers, 
until  we  come  to  the  age  when  forgeries  were  popular;  and 
it  is  probable  that,  like  many  of  the  greatest  teachers, 
Pythagoras  developed  his  ideas  by  oral  instruction  and 
never  wrote  anything.  The  whole  course  of  tradition, 
however,  assigns  to  the  Founder  of  the  Order  the  idea  that 
the  world  is  explicable  in  some  way  by  the  operation  of 
two  bodies  called  Limit  and  Unlimited.  The  latter  of  the 
two,  as  we  gather  from  Aristotle,2  was  identified  with 
boundless  breath  which  existed  outside  the  world,  and 
which,  when  inhaled  by  the  world,  keeps  the  parts  of  the 
world  separate  from  one  another.  In  another  passage,  Aris- 

1  Aristoxenus  DFV,  p.  282,  44.  On  philosophy  as  "music"  cf.  Plato, 
Phaed.  61  a  3,  Char.  157  a  3  (on  Zalmoxis,  who  was  said  to  have  been  a  slave 
of  Pythagoras,  Herod.  IV,  95),  and  Strabo  X,  468. 

2  Phys.  IV,  6.  213  b  22,  23. 

C38  3 


PYTHAGORAS  AND  XENOPHANES 

totle  employs  the  same  idea  in  describing  the  Pythagorean 
view  of  creation  as  the  differentiation  of  an  original  mass 
by  the  introduction  of  air  (Unlimited)  from  the  outside.3 
If  then  the  Unlimited  is  to  be  identified  with  the  bound- 
less breath  or  air,  which  was  also  thought  of  as  function- 
ing like  a  void,  what  was  the  Limit?  The  natural  inter- 
pretation would  suggest  that  it  should  be  the  substance 
which  was  broken  up  by  the  introduction  of  the  void.  But 
if  we  suppose  that  the  last  part  of  Parmenides'  poem  is  at 
least  fundamentally  Pythagorean,  then  the  opposition 
there  maintained  between  Fire  and  Night  must  correspond 
to  Limit  and  Unlimited.  Now  it  is  we'll  known  that  air, 
mist,  and  darkness  were  considered  as  forms  of  the  same 
natural  element,4  so  that  it  is  easy  to  identify  the  Night 
of  Parmenides  with  the  Pythagorean  Unlimited.  That 
leaves  Fire  to  be  assigned  to  Limit  and  to  be  thought  of  as 
the  element  which  formed  the  mass  of  the  heavenly  bodies. 
These  bodies  were  described  by  Parmenides  as  rings  of  fire ; 
that  is,  the  parts  of  the  world,  such  as  the  sun,  the  moon, 
and  the  stars,  were  believed  to  be  masses  of  flame.  This 
was  also  the  theory  of  Anaximander  and  of  Anaximenes, 
and  with  the  Milesian  cosmology  in  general  the  Pythago- 
rean seems  to  have  been  closely  connected.  We  find  the 
same  idea  moreover  in  a  somewhat  modified  form  in  the 
later  Pythagorean  doctrine  of  the  central  fire.5  From  these 
indications  it  seems  probable  that  Pythagoras  believed  the 

3  Met.  XIV,  3.  1091  a  14.  cf.  Philolaus,  frags.  7,  17. 

4  Schmidt,  Synonymik,  35.  Note  also  that  Parmenides  (frag.  8,  59)  de- 
scribed Night  as  a  "thick  and  heavy  body,"  which  Aristotle  {Met.  I,  5.  986 
b  34)  identified  with  earth.  Thus  earth,  mist,  darkness,  cold,  and  air  be- 
longed together  in  the  early  view  and  were  "opposed  to"  the  fire  of  the 
heavenly  bodies.  For  this  reason  the  earth  was  believed  to  be  quite  different 
from  the  heavenly  bodies,  and  the  phenomena  of  its  atmosphere  distinct 
from  celestial  movements — a  view  which  formed  the  basis  for  Aristotle's 
separation  of  the  celestial  and  the  sublunary. 

3RP  81. 

C  39  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

heavenly  bodies  to  be  formed  of  fire,  and  that  he  identified 
fire  with  Limit.  We  should  accordingly  make  our  interpre- 
tation of  his  cosmology  as  follows :  there  were  originally 
two  bodies  or  things,  one  of  fire  and  the  other  of  air ;  the 
former,  which  was  active,  drew  in  the  surrounding  air 
and  so  separated  off  from  itself  parts  which  were  suc- 
cessively inclosed  in  portions  of  air;  and  this  air,  which  is 
also  a  void,  keeps  the  parts  of  the  world  separate. 

If  this  reconstruction  of  Pythagorean  cosmology  is 
correct,  it  means  that  Pythagoras,  like  the  last  two  Mile- 
sian philosophers,  based  his  explanation  of  the  world  on  a 
fundamental  opposition  between  two  elemental  bodies; 
but  that,  unlike  his  predecessors,  he  thought  of  these  oppo- 
sites  as  ultimate  and  did  not  attempt  to  reduce  them  to 
an  underlying  unity.  This  doctrine  is  usually  called  the 
Pythagorean  dualism.  But  spontaneous  motion  (inhala- 
tion) was  attributed  to  one  of  these  opposites,  Limit  or 
Fire,  and  this  body  was  no  doubt  conceived  as  a  material 
divinity,  in  the  same  way  as  the  Milesians  had  conceived 
their  principles.  The  other  Pythagorean  principle,  Un- 
limited or  Air,  was  apparently  not  endowed  with  activity. 
Hence  the  opposites,  though  both  ultimate,  were  disparate 
in  cosmological  causation. 

According  to  a  wellnigh  unanimous  tradition,  Pytha- 
goras not  only  devoted  himself  to  a  study  of  numbers 
and  developed  arithmetic  and  geometry  to  a  high  point, 
but  also  in  some  mysterious  fashion  interpreted  his  cos- 
mological views  in  mathematical  terms.6  This  mathe- 
matical cosmology  seems  to  have  centered  about  a  figure 
called  the  tetractys,  and  especially  the  tetractys  of  the 
decad,  which  may  be  represented  thus  .•;"•;•.  The  dots 
stood  for  numbers,  in  the  same  way  as  they  do  on  dice; 

6  Stob.  l,  p.  20,  l ;  Arist.,  Met.  I,  5.  985  b  22-986  b  8. 

[4°  3 


PYTHAGORAS  AND  XENOPHANES 

and  the  figure  thus  presents  the  series  of  natural  integers 
up  to  four,  the  sum  of  which  equals  ten.  In  later  times 
many  significant  features  of  the  decad  were  advertised, 
and  ten  was  held  to  be  a  perfect  number,  so  that  "accord- 
ing to  nature"  all  people,  whether  Greek  or  barbarian, 
count  up  to  ten  and  then  start  over  again.  The  tetractys 
of  the  decad  was  attributed  to  Pythagoras  himself  by  his 
followers,  and  they  used  it  in  the  oath  by  which  they 
swore:  "By  him  who  gave  our  soul  (al. — tribe,  head)  the 
tetractys,  which  has  the  source  and  root  of  ever-springing 
nature."7  This  oath,  in  spite  of  the  Doric  forms  of  its 
words,  which  are  no  doubt  due  to  later  generations  of  the 
Order,  has  every  internal  indication  of  being  very  ancient ; 
for  the  concept  of  an  "ever-springing  nature,"  about  which 
the  important  question  was  its  "source"  or  "root"  (that 
out  of  which),  is  almost  certainly  anterior  to  Empedo- 
cles,  and  bears  a  very  strong  resemblance  to  the  Mile- 
sian point  of  view.  We  must  ask  then  in  what  sense  the 
tetractys  of  the  decad  contained  the  root  of  nature,  or  how 
this  mathematical  formula  could  be  used  to  express  a 
cosmological  doctrine. 

In  answering  this  question,  it  is  important  to  bear  in 
mind  that  the  Greeks  did  not  have  a  zero  in  their  arith- 
metic— their  numerical  series  commenced  with  one,  and 
Aristotle  said  that  it  is  the  essence  of  one  to  be  a  starting- 
point  of  number.8  Moreover  there  seems  to  have  been  a 
general  assumption  that  numbers  were  things.  That  is  no 
doubt  a  very  primitive  view,  in  line  with  the  notion  which 
was  implied  in  many  practices  of  ancient  magic,  that 
names  are  real  things  and  form  a  substantial  part  of  the 

7Theo  Smyr.,  p.  97,  Hfrler;  Proclus  in  Plat.  Tim.  155  c,  4;  Porphyr.  Vit. 
Pytk.  20;  Iambi.  Vit.  Pyth.  150. 

8  Met.  V,  6.  1016  b  18.  On  the  significance  of  zero,  see  Whitehead,  Intro- 
duction  to  Mathematics,  p.  63. 

[41  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

persons  to  whom  they  belong.9  It  was  this  assumption, 
that  numbers  are  things,  which  permitted  the  early  Greek 
mathematicians  to  identify  the  number  one  with  a  point, 
which  gave  rise  to  the  later  metaphysical  puzzles  concern- 
ing the  substance  of  unity,  and  which  also  formed  the 
foundation  of  the  Pythagorean  doctrine  that  "the  whole 
heaven  is  harmony  and  number."10  Now  if  you  start  with 
a  real  one  or  solitary  unit,  you  would  have  to  divide  it 
to  get  two;  and  two  would  therefore  represent  a  differen- 
tiation of  the  original  one.  Three  and  four  likewise  would 
result  from  further  differentiations,  and  so  on  up  to  ten, 
when  the  process  begins  afresh.  It  is  this  process  which  we 
must  suppose  to  be  symbolized  in  the  tetractys  of  the 
decad.  The  tetractys  pictures  the  series  of  natural  integers 
as  a  system  produced  by  successive  differentiations  from 
an  original  one.  And  if  this  original  one  is  identified  with 
the  original  mass  of  fire,  as  it  existed  in  the  beginning,  the 
cosmological  process  assumed  by  Pythagoras  may  be  de- 
scribed as  the  progressive  splitting  up  of  the  initial  mass 
by  successive  inhalations  of  air  or  void.11  At  each  stage 
a  portion  of  the  first  body  was  separated  off,  to  use  Anaxi- 
mander's  phrase;  but  we  do  not  know  how  many  such 
stages  Pythagoras  assumed.  It  would  seem  likely  that  he 
should  agree  with  Anaximander  on  this  point  also,  and 
posit  four  cosmic  bodies — the  sun,  the  moon,  the  stars, 
and  the  earth;  but  later  members  of  the  Order  assumed 
ten  revolving  bodies.  Be  that  as  it  may,  the  tetractys  of 
the  decad,  which  has  the  root  of  nature,  is  to  be  interpreted 
as  a  formula  representing  the  cosmological  process  as  a 

9  cf .  Jevons,  "Greco-Italian  Magic,"  in  Anthropology  and  the  Classics. 

10  Arist.,  Met.  I,  5.  986  a  3. 

11  It  should  be  noted  that  for  Pythagoras  there  was  no  question  of  the 
creation  of  the  original  one,  about  which  Aristotle  complains ;  it  was  not 
created,  but  was  that  which  existed  at  the  beginning. 

[42  3 


PYTHAGORAS  AND  XENOPHANES 

progressive  and  systematic  differentiation  of  an  original 
unitary  mass. 

Pythagoras  is  also  represented  as  having  busied  him- 
self with  musical  harmony  and  as  having  discovered  the 
numerical  ratios  between  the  four  stationary  notes  of  the 
lyre.12  Here  again  our  sources  of  information  are  so  de- 
fective that  we  cannot  tell  how  this  momentous  discovery 
was  made;  but  it  is  possible  to  show  that  the  same  con- 
siderations which  were  apparently  used  to  interpret,  the 
cosmological  process  and  the  series  of  natural  integers 
might  also  be  applied  to  harmony.  At  the  time  of  Pytha- 
goras, the  Greek  lyre  had  seven  strings  of  equal  length; 
but  his  discovery  of  numerical  ratios  probably  related 
only  to  the  four  so-called  stationary  notes,  which  we  may 
think  of  as  low  Mi,  La,  Si,  and  high  Mi.  Of  course,  he 
had  no  means  of  measuring  either  tension  or  rate  of  vibra- 
tion, and  he  must  have  worked  by  comparing  lengths  of 
string.  If  he  took  a  string  (say  12  inches  long)  that  would 
produce  low  Mi,  and  stopped  it  a  certain  distance  (3 
inches)  inward  from  either  end,  the  remainder  of  the 
string  (9  inches  long)  would  give  La,  and  the  ratio  be- 
tween the  two  lengths  would  be  12:9.  Another  distance 
( 1  inch)  in  the  same  direction  would  give  Si  (12:8);  and 
still  another  (2  inches  beyond  Si)  would  give  high  Mi,  an 
octave  (12:6)  above  the  original  note.  The  original 
string  has  thus  been  successively  "limited,"  and  each  new 
limitation  represents  a  definite  differentiation  of  the 
original  unit.  Thus  the  production  of  these  musical  har- 
monies may  be  viewed  as  the  successive  differentiations 
or  limitations  of  an  original  unit,  in  the  same  way  as  the 

12  For  further  information  see  P.  Laloy,  Aristoxene  de  Tarente  et  la 
musique  de  I'antiquite,  p.  49 ;  Smith's  Diet,  of  Antiquities,  s.vv.  "Lyra," 
"Musica." 

[43  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

heavenly  bodies  represent  successive  limitations  of  an 
original  mass  of  fire,  and  the  natural  integers  represent 
successive  divisions  of  an  original  unit. 

It  is  now  possible  to  surmise  the  significance  of  the 
Pythagorean  terms,  Limit  and  Unlimited,  in  their  cos- 
mological  sense.  The  Milesians  had  not  been  satisfied  with 
the  contest  of  opposites,  which  seemed  to  be  the  most 
obvious  feature  of  nature,  and  their  dissatisfaction  had 
induced  them  to  posit  an  ultimate  substance  out  of  which 
the  opposites  came;  Anaximander  had  described  the  cos- 
mological  process  merely  as  a  separating  off,  but  Anaxi- 
menes  had  attempted  to  show  that  it  was  a  separating  off 
that  was  also  a  rarefaction  and  condensation  with  a 
quantitative  aspect.  Pythagoras  agreed  that  it  was  a  sep- 
arating off,  but  held  that  it  was  only  a  quantitative 
limitation.  The  parts  of  the  world,  according  to  Pytha- 
goras, are  fragments  broken  from  an  original  mass  and 
separated  by  air,  so  that  each  successive  fragment  repre- 
sents a  further  limitation  of  the  original  whole.  Since 
the  process  is  a  purely  quantitative  one,  it  can  be  de- 
scribed mathematically;  and  for  the  same  reason  each 
stage  has  a  definite  relation  to  preceding  stages  and 
to  the  whole,  so  that  the  world  is  a  harmony.  It  is  not 
in  any  sense  a  harmony  of  opposites ;  it  is  rather  a  harmony 
of  different  portions  of  the  same  thing,  as  in  the  series  of 
natural  integers  and  the  string  of  the  lyre.13  Hence  Pytha- 
goras could  do  away  entirely  with  the  notion  of  Injustice 
and  a  contest  between  opposing  bodies,  first  because  his 
opposites  did  not  "oppose"  each  other  in  Anaximander's 

13  I  therefore  believe  it  is  wrong  to  explain  the  early  Pythagorean  apfxovia 
as  KpScris;  the  former  refers  to  a  system  of  things  which  keep  their  indi- 
vidualities, while  the  latter  implies  a  blending  of  differences.  Also  I  doubt 
the  genuineness  of  the  medical  doctrines  sometimes  attributed  to  the 
Founder — they  are  more  likely  after  Alcmeon  than  before  him. 

[443 


PYTHAGORAS  AND  XENOPHANES 

sense,  and  secondly  because  the  material  parts  of  the 
world  were  related  harmoniously  to  one  another.  Thus 
Pythagoras  thought  of  natural  regularity,  not  as  a  Justice 
that  compensates  for  Injustice,  but  as  a  mathematical  har- 
mony. And  finally  since  the  world  was  harmonized  in  this 
sense,  it  could  be  called  a  cosmos  or  orderly  collection  of 
parts,  like  an  army  in  array.  It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that 
Pythagoras  was  the  author  of  the  cosmos-idea;  and  the 
essence  of  Pythagorean  cosmology  seems  to  be  contained 
in  these  notions  of  limit,  harmony,  and  cosmos.14 

Exactly  how  these  cosmological  doctrines  were  related 
to  the  religious  side  of  Pythagoreanism  is  a  question  that 
has  greatly  vexed  historians,  and  which,  with  the  evidence 
at  present  available,  admits  of  no  final  answer.  It  would 
appear,  however,  that  the  whole  notion  of  purification 
by  devotion  to  philosophy  would  have  been  meaningless 
and  absurd,  unless  by  means  of  this  philosophical  activity 
the  soul  of  the  inquirer  was  led  into  the  presence  of  god. 
Where  then  is  god  to  be  found  in  the  Pythagorean  cos- 
mology"? It  can  only  be  in  the  figure  of  Limit  or  Fire,  the 
active  principle,  whose  operation  was  described  in  the 
tetractys  of  the  decad.  If  objection  is  made  to  this  inter- 
pretation on  the  ground  that  it  leaves  the  Unlimited  out 
of  account,  I  should  reply  that  the  Unlimited  or  Air  was 

14  I  do  not  believe  that  Pythagoras  was  the  author  of  the  doctrine  that 
things  are  numbers.  This  doctrine  is  an  extreme  form  of  the  number  the- 
ory, which  would  seem  to  follow  most  naturally  after  Philolaus'  doctrine 
that  things  have  number ;  and  it  can  in  fact  be  attributed  with  great  prob- 
ability to  Eurytus,  a  disciple  of  philolaus.  cf.  Theophr.  Met.  VI  a  19, 
Usener ;  and  for  Philolaus  see  below,  chap.  vm.  It  seems  to  me  an  anachron- 
ism to  make  Pythagoras  interested  in  "things";  he  was  interested  in  "the 
source  and  root  of  ever-springing  nature."  The  interest  in  "things"  came 
in  with  Empedocles  and  is  found  in  Philolaus,  cf.  below,  p.  134,  note  3. 
Most  of  the  evidence  ordinarily  offered  for  the  doctrine  that  things  are 
numbers  really  supports  only  the  doctrine  that  numbers  are  things,  which 
is  quite  a  different  matter  and  which  I  fully  admit  as  underlying  the 
earliest  form  of  Pythagoreanism. 

n  45  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

apparently  confused  with  a  void;  that  almost  certainly 
Limit  alone  was  represented  as  active,  and  self -activity 
was,  as  we  have  previously  seen,  the  prime  characteristic 
of  divinity;  and  finally  that  it  was  perfectly  conceivable 
for  the  Greeks  to  have  two  ultimates  and  identify  one  of 
them  with  god,  as  Empedocles  and  Aristotle  show. 

3.  Xenophanes,  like  Pythagoras,  left  his  home  (Colo- 
phon) in  Ionia,  and  went  to  western  Hellas.  There  was 
a  story  that  he  settled  at  Elea  in  Italy  and  founded  the 
Eleatic  School  of  philosophy;  but  that  story  rests  on 
doubtful  evidence  and  is  difficult  to  reconcile  with  other 
data  about  him  as  well  as  with  our  knowledge  of  Elea- 
ticism.  Probably  he  lived  mostly  in  Sicily,  but  settled 
nowhere  permanently  and  founded  no  school.  Indeed  he 
was  not  primarily  a  philosopher  at  all,  but  a  poet  who 
wrote  elegies  and  satires.  The  remains  of  these  poems, 
however,  indicate  that  the  author  was  a  poet  with  a  "mes- 
sage," and  the  burden  of  his  song  was  an  attack  on  the 
decadence  of  Ionian  civilization.  In  attempting  to  work 
a  reform,  he  was  led  to  oppose  the  traditional  view  of  the 
gods  and  to  propose  certain  positive  views  of  the  world, 
which  have  considerable  philosophical  interest. 

Xenophanes'  opposition  to  the  traditional  notion  of 
the  gods  appears  to  include  two  main  considerations: 
first,  that  Homer  and  Hesiod,  who  were  the  chief  sources 
of  this  notion,  had  ascribed  to  the  divine  beings  actions 
that  were  judged  immoral  when  performed  by  human 
beings;  second,  that  this  view  involved  an  anthropo- 
morphism, so  that  the  Ethiopians  made  their  gods  black 
and  snub-nosed,  while  the  Thracians  assumed  theirs  had 
blue  eyes  and  red  hair.  This  last  statement  indicates  that 
the  author  had  in  mind  not  merely  the  Greek,  but  the 
general  notion  of  gods,  which  was  current  in  the  polythe- 

C463 


PYTHAGORAS  AND  XENOPHANES 

istic  religions  of  the  nations  with  which  the  Greeks  were 
in  contact.  Now  in  interpreting  Xenophanes,  we  are  apt 
to  read  into  his  statements  our  own  modern  point  of  view, 
and  to  understand  him  as  attacking  the  ordinary  religious 
beliefs  because  they  involved  anthropomorphism;  but  his 
statements  are  not  framed  in  this  way,  and  such  an  inter- 
pretation of  them  is  at  least  questionable.  In  his  day  every 
educated  person  knew  that  the  poets  sang  about  the  thefts 
and  adulteries  practised  among  the  Olympians,  and  no 
doubt  accepted  such  tales  as  a  matter  of  course — the  gods 
were  after  all  gods,  and  there  was  no  ground  for  supposing 
they  were  subject  to  the  restrictions  which  seemed  desir- 
able among  men.  If  Zeus  stole  or  committed  an  act  of  lust, 
that  was  no  reason  why  mortals  should  have  such  liberties. 
And  as  for  each  race  of  men  picturing  its  gods  in  a  racial 
resemblance,  what  was  strange  about  that  as  long  as  the 
gods  were  gods  of  particular  races'?  If  the  Thracians  had 
gods  who  were  gods  of  the  Thracians  and  not  of  other 
peoples,  it  was  eminently  natural  to  believe  that  these 
divine  beings  were  characteristically  Thracian.  No  one 
needed  Xenophanes  to  establish  such  well-known  facts, 
and  Xenophanes  could  not  use  these  generally  accepted 
practices  in  and  of  themselves  as  reasons  for  an  attack 
on  religion. 

Why  then  did  he  make  these  statements'?  The  answer 
would  seem  to  be  because  he  wished  to  contrast  these 
views  with  another  view  which  he  held  to  be  better,  and 
of  which  some  features  have  been  preserved  in  the  extant 
fragments  of  his  poems.  In  contrast  with  the  many  gods 
who  were  limited  each  to  a  particular  race,  Xenophanes 
put  "one  god,  the  greatest  among  gods  and  men";  in 
contrast  with  gods  who  were  pictured  in  the  voice,  form, 
and  even  clothes  of  a  human  tribe,  Xenophanes  set  a  god 

C47] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

who  was  "like  mortals  neither  in  form  nor  in  thought"  and 
who  ruled  the  world  merely  "by  the  thought  of  his  mind" ; 
and  against  the  poetic  tales  in  which  gods  went. about 
committing  all  manner  of  immoral  deeds,  Xenophanes 
held  that  god  "stays  always  in  the  same  place,  moving 
not  at  all,  for  it  does  not  befit  him  to  go  about  hither  and 
yon."  It  is  thus  quite  evident  that  the  author  had  in  mind 
a  new  notion  of  divinity,  which  he  wished  to  substitute 
for  the  traditional  view — a  notion  of  one  great  god,  the 
ruler  of  all  things,  whose  very  nature  and  dignity  made 
preposterous  the  vulgar  tales  of  divine  society. 

We  must  then  ask  from  what  source  Xenophanes  had 
derived  this  new  idea  of  god,  and  what  reasons  he  could 
give  for  commending  it  in  opposition  to  the  traditional 
religion.  The  answer  to  each  of  these  questions  is  the  same. 
The  extant  fragments  of  his  poems  have  preserved  sev- 
eral statements  of  a  cosmological  character,  and  these 
references  together  with  the  doxographical  tradition  are 
sufficient  to  indicate  that  the  author  had  adopted  Ionian 
science.  He  seems  to  have  held  that  the  heavenly  bodies 
were  clouds  ignited  by  motion,  and  that  all  things  were 
ultimately  earth  and  water.  We  must  suppose  that  he 
thought  of  earth  and  water  as  primary  opposites,  in  much 
the  same  way  as  Anaximander  had  thought  of  the  hot 
and  the  cold.  When  therefore  Xenophanes  speaks  of  one 
god,  we  must  follow  Aristotle  in  holding  that  he  meant 
the  world.  We  do  not  know  how  Xenophanes  explained 
the  creation  of  earth  and  water  from  the  world-whole, 
and  there  appear  to  be  several  inconsistencies  in  the  cos- 
mological theories  attributed  to  him  by  the  later  tradition ; 
but  let  us  not  forget  that  we  are  not  dealing  with  a 
cosmologist  but  a  poet,  and  the  information  we  already 
have  is  sufficient  to  mark  the  philosophical  significance 

[48: 


PYTHAGORAS  AND  XENOPHANES 

of  the  author.  Xenophanes  got  his  idea  of  god  from  science, 
and  he  supported  this  idea  by  scientific  explanations  of 
facts  which  had  hitherto  been  ascribed  to  mythological 
personages. 

The  real  point  of  Xenophanes'  work  tends  to  be  over- 
looked by  modern  readers  unless  they  keep  clearly  in  their 
imagination  the  contrast  that  he  meant  to  draw  between 
his  own  and  the  traditional  views.  If  Iris  (the  rainbow)  is 
really  a  cloud  formed  from  the  sea,  Homer's  picture  of  her 
as  the  messenger  of  the  gods  seems  like  pure  fancy.  If  the 
sun  is  really  a  collection  of  sparks,  it  is  difficult  to  imagine 
it  as  a  divine  person.  And  if  the  world  is  one  great  god, 
the  whole  Olympian  fraternity  seems  unnecessary.  Xeno- 
phanes meant  to  substitute  the  scientific  point  of  view 
for  the  traditional  one,  through  the  implication  that  when 
science  has  explained  a  thing,  it  is  impossible  to  think 
of  that  thing  in  any  but  a  scientific  way. 

One  final  remark  needs  to  be  made.  In  the  writings  of 
Xenophanes,  the  modern  departments  of  science,  religion, 
philosophy,  and  morality,  are  inextricably  interwoven. 
He  believed  the  life  of  his  fellow  Ionians  was  decadent 
and  unprofitable,  and  their  religion  was  improper.  He  did 
not  say  that  their  mode  of  living  was  partly  the  effect  of 
their  religion;  but  the  reason  he  did  not  say  so  was  because 
he  could  not  abstract  the  one  from  the  other.  He  believed 
also  that  science  pointed  to  a  god  totally  unlike  the  gods 
of  traditional  religion  and  mythology,  but  he  still 
believed  that  men  should  "worship  god  with  joy."  It 
would  be  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  work  of 
Xenophanes  and  early  Greek  cosmology  as  a  whole  were 
either  pure  science  or  pure  philosophy  in  our  sense  of  the 
words,  and  a  still  greater  mistake  to  imagine  that  they 
had  no  reference  to  religion  and  morals.  We  may  well 

C49] 


:3  V 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

I 

hesitate  to  call  Xenophanes  a  monotheist,  because  that 
term  carries  associations  for  us  which  it  did  not  have  for 
him;  and  yet  it  cannot  be  denied  that  he  represents  the 
transition  from  tribal  polytheism  to  a  unified,  cosmic 
religious  attitude.  We  may  also  legitimately  refuse  to 
regard  him  as  an  ethical  philosopher,  and  yet  we  must 
admit  that  his  writings  unite  a  view  of  the  world  with 
a  view  of  life. 


CHAPTER  IV 

HERACLITUS 

l.  Heraclitus  was  a  native  of  Ephesus,  and  so  far  as 
we  know  he  remained  at  home  and  did  not,  like  Pytha- 
goras and  Xenophanes,  emigrate  to  the  West.  He  had 
heard  of  their  doctrines,  for  he  mentions  them  by  name; 
and  we  have  already  seen  that  all  three  of  them  had 
certain  fundamental  points  of  agreement  in  their  think- 
ing. But  his  philosophical  activity  was  probably  later 
than  theirs,  and  would  fall  mainly  in  the  first  years  of 
the  fifth  century.  He  put  his  ideas  in  writing,  and  suffi- 
cient fragments  of  his  work  have  been  preserved  to  enable 
us  to  make  out  the  main  features  of  his  system  without 
the  reliance  on  later  tradition  which  is  necessary  in  the 
case  of  the  Milesians  and  Pythagoras.  He  wrote,  however, 
in  an  oracular  fashion,  expressing  his  thoughts  in  short, 
epigrammatic  sentences,  with  the  result  that  his  meaning 
is  frequently  obscure  and  he  gained  the  nickname  of  "the 
Dark." 

2.  It  is  abundantly  clear  that  Heraclitus  was  con- 
scious of  the  quality  of  his  style;  and  he  appears  to  regard 
it  as  the  appropriate  vehicle  of  his  thought.  No  doubt  this 
style  was  partly  the  expression  of  his  individuality,  which 
was  marked,  and  partly  due  to  the  spirit  of  the  age ;  but 
it  also  seems  to  have  a  philosophical  significance.  This 
manner  of  writing  was  quite  different  from  all  ordinary 
prose,  and  Heraclitus  is  at  pains  to  dissociate  himself 

:  51 1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

from  other  thinkers,  some  of  whom  he  mentions  by  name. 
Running  through  all  his  criticisms  of  these  thinkers  there 
is  the  idea  that  they  had  failed  to  use  their  understanding 
— Homer  had  prayed  for  the  end  of  strife  and  had  not 
understood  that  this  would  mean  the  destruction  of  the 
world;  Pythagoras  had  practised  scientific  inquiry  and 
knew  many  things,  but  his  knowledge  was  not  geniune 
understanding.  And  so,  speaking  in  general,  Heraclitus 
says:  "Of  all  whose  discourses  I  have  heard,  not  one  has 
advanced  so  far  as  to  understand  that  wisdom  is  separate 
from  all  things"  (B  18,  D  108).  For  the  same  reason  also 
he  despised  the  common  people,  who  never  really  thought 
and  who  acted  as  if  they  were  asleep.  He  seems  therefore 
to  feel  that  a  true  understanding  demands  digging  down 
beneath  the  surface  of  things  to  a  hidden  truth,  which  no 
one  else  had  found;  and  that  wisdom  is  to  be  gained  by 
penetrating  insights,  such  as  characterized  the  utterances 
of  the  Delphic  oracle. 

Consonant  with  this  attitude  are  certain  remarks  which 
he  makes  on  the  subject  of  experience  by  the  senses.  "Eyes 
and  ears  are  bad  witnesses  to  persons  who  have  untutored 
(lit.,  barbaric)  souls"  (B4,  D  107).  Again  and  again  the 
author  contrasts  understanding  or  wisdom  with  the  testi- 
mony of  the  senses,  the  mere  learning  of  many  things,  or 
scientific  inquiry;  and  the  fragments  of  his  work  leave  no 
room  for  doubt  that  he  neither  was  nor  wished  to  be  a 
scientific  investigator.  Sense  experience,  knowledge  of 
many  things,  and  scientific  inquiry  were  characteristic  of 
the  common  herd,  the  poets,  and  previous  investigators, 
all  of  whom,  as  we  have  just  seen,  Heraclitus  condemned. 
It  can  therefore  hardly  be  questioned  that  he  meant  to 
distinguish  understanding  from  mere  sense  experience, 
that  he  connected  the  former  directly  with  the  soul,  and 

[52 1 


HERACLITUS 

that  he  thought  of  it  as  superior  to  the  latter.  There  is  no 
warrant  for  attributing  to  him  any  more  definite  psychol- 
ogy than  that ;  but  that  much  is  philosophically  important 
as  indicating  that  thus  early  in  the  development  of  Greek 
philosophy  a  distinction,  rough  and  vague  as  it  may  have 
been,  was  made  between  the  evidence  of  the  senses  and  a 
higher  faculty  of  the  soul.1 

3.  What  then  does  the  understanding  of  Heraclitus 
discover  when  it  penetrates  below  the  surface  of  things? 
It  discovers  that  underneath  all  the  apparent  multiplicity 
and  strife  there  is  a  hidden  unity  and  harmony.  But  this 
doctrine  of  unity  is  not  merely  an  explicit  rendering  of 
the  implication  which  had  been  present  in  the  thought  of 
the  Milesians  and  Xenophanes — if  it  had  been  only  that? 
there  would  have  been  no  reason  for  Heraclitus  to  con- 
demn his  predecessors  so  roundly.  What  he  meant  by  unity 
was  that  the  various  separate  things  in  the  world  were 
really  not  separate  and  distinct  from  one  another,  but 
all  one.  Anaximander  had  taken  his  stand  on  the  evidence 
of  sensation  when  he  maintained  that  there  were  "oppo- 
sites,"  like  the  hot  and  the  cold,  and  that  one  of  these 
opposites  could  never  be  reduced  to  the  other — hot  was 
not  cold  and  never  could  become  cold.  But  Heraclitus 
maintained  that  if  you  used  your  understanding  with  your 
senses,  you  would  see  that  opposites  do  precisely  what 
Anaximander  suggested  they  could  not  do — they  pass 
into  one  another.  "Cold  things  become  warm  and  the 
warm  cools,  the  wet  dries  and  the  parched  is  moistened" 

1  This  may  well  be  taken  as  the  beginning  of  the  tendency  to  distinguish 
between  qualities  directly  sensed  and  qualities  inferred  by  reason,  a  ten- 
dency which  produced  the  sensible  and  the  intelligible  "worlds"  in  Plato, 
led  to  the  doctrine  of  secondary  and  primary  qualities  in  early  modern 
philosophy,  and  has  lately  reappeared  in  the  writing  of  scientific  philoso- 
phers ;  cf.  Whitehead,  The  Principles  of  Natural  Knowledge,  chap,  vn ;  The 
Concept  of  Nature,  chaps.  1,  11. 

C  53  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

(B39,  D  126).  In  the  doctrine  of  Heraclitus  the  unity  of 
the  world  involves  the  passage  of  opposites  into  one  an- 
other, a  conception  whose  absence,  he  believed,  had 
vitiated  all  earlier  explanations  of  the  world. 

4.  It  is  evident  that  if  things  pass  into  their  opposites, 
the  world  must  be  in  a  continual  flux,  and  that  is  the 
conclusion  which  Heraclitus  drew.  The  appearance  of 
stability  in  things  is  an  illusion  of  the  senses,  which  must 
be  corrected  by  the  understanding;  and  the  understanding 
shows  that  a  thing  is  not  permanently  fixed  and  stereo- 
typed against  its  opposite,  but  is  inevitably  destined  to 
pass  into  it.  All  things  are  changing,  and  the  whole  is  like 
a  river  which  is  never  the  same  on  account  of  the  flow 
of  fresh  water  (B41,  42,  D  12).  The  world  is  a  process. 

5.  Now  a  continual  flux  of  all  things  would  by  itself  be 
a  mere  chaos,  and  as  the  world  is  not  a  chaos,  there  must 
be  some  principle  which  unifies  and  regulates  the  changes. 
Heraclitus  believed  in  the  first  place  that  all  the  petty 
changes  which  are  visible  in  different  objects  could  be 
reduced  to  the  transformations  that  occur  between  three 
gross  substances,  earth,  water,  and  fire.  In  studying  the 
Milesians,  we  have  seen  that  they  believed  they  perceived 
certain  qualitative  transformations  between  various  mate- 
rials, which  later  investigations  proved  to  be  illusory;  and 
we  therefore  need  not  be  surprised  to  find  Heraclitus 
assuming  the  same  kind  of  changes.  In  fact  he  seems  to 
have  held  that  earth  is  liquefied  so  that  it  turns  into 
water,  and  that  the  sea  gives  forth  exhalations  which  feed 
the  fire  in  the  sun  and  the  other  celestial  bodies;  and  on 
the  other  hand,  the  fire  of  the  sun  appears  in  the  fiery 
storm-cloud  which  produces  water,  and  water  turns  to 
earth,  as  happens  in  the  case  of  alluvial  deposits.  It  will 
be  seen  that  these  transformations  form  two  regular  series, 

l  54  1 


HERACLITUS 

first  that  from  earth  to  sea  to  fire,  second  that  from  fire  to 
sea  to  earth;  and  as  Heraclitus  localized  the  fire  in  the 
heavenly  bodies,  especially  the  sun,  he  called  these  two 
series  of  transformations  "the  upward  and  the  downward 
path."  He  thus  held  that  all  changes  are  explicable  by 
the  transformations  of  materials  in  the  upward  and  the 
downward  paths. 

6.  But  there  was  still  something  that  needed  explana- 
tion, and  that  was  how  the  three  gross  elements,  and  indeed 
all  objects,  could  give  the  appearance  of  stability  and 
permanence,  if  they  were  really  continually  changing. 
Heraclitus  met  this  problem  by  the  theory  that  every 
transformation  involves  a  "measure,"  and  is  matched  by 
a  transformation  of  equal  "measure"  in  the  opposite  direc- 
tion. Thus  in  proportion  as  the  earth  turns  into  sea,  the 
sea  turns  back  into  earth;  and  in  proportion  as  the  sea 
gives  off  exhalations  to  the  celestial  fire,  it  receives  fresh 
complements  of  water  from  the  heavens;  so  that  at  any 
moment,  the  sea,  for  instance,  has  one  part  changing  into 
fire  and  another  part  changing  into  earth,  but  still  main- 
tains its  individuality  by  exchanges  from  the  other  two 
substances.  But  apparently  Heraclitus  did  not  hold  that 
the  measures  which  governed  all  transformations  were 
absolutely  fixed,  but  supposed  on  the  contrary  that  they 
varied  within  limits;  and  in  this  way  he  accounted  for  the 
alternation  of  day  and  night,  winter  and  summer,  and 
phenomena  of  that  variety. 

This  Heraclitean  conception  of  measures  is  philosoph- 
ically significant  as  a  fresh  attempt  to  appreciate  natural 
regularity.  Anaximander  had  argued  from  the  alterna- 
tion of  sensibly  stable  opposites,  like  the  hot  and  the 
cold,  to  a  law  of  retribution,  compensating  for  any  ad- 
vance of  one  opposite  over  the  other,  which  he  regarded 

i:  55  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

as  Injustice.  Heraclitus,  on  the  other  hand,  seems  to  sug- 
gest that  the  understanding  must  interpret  this  apparent 
strife  of  opposites  as  a  harmony  of  interaction  within  pre- 
ordained limits.  There  is  therefore  an  explicit  contrast 
between  the  notions  of  strife  and  harmony  (B45,  D51), 
and  a  latent  contrast  between  retribution  after  the  fact 
and  preordained  limit.  This  latter  contrast  corresponds 
roughly  to  the  difference  between  the  notion  of  political 
law  as  a  means  of  rectifying  injustice  when  committed, 
exemplified  probably  in  Draco's  codification,  and  the 
notion  of  previously  defined  rights,  which  is  implied  in  the 
constitutional  reforms  of  Solon  and  the  later  legal  struc- 
ture based  upon  them.2  Thus,  when  Heraclitus  says :  "the 
sun  will  not  transgress  his  measures,  and  if  he  does, 
the  Erinyes,  the  assistants  of  Justice,  will  find  him  out" 
(B29,  D94),  we  are  to  think  of  these  measures  as  natural 
law  in  the  sense  of  preordained  principles  of  cosmic 
activity. 

7.  The  measures  that  regulate  the  constant  flux  of 
earth,  water,  and  fire,  seemed  to  point  to  an  ultimate, 
unifying  force;  and  Heraclitus  believed  this  force  was 
fire.  "This  ordered  world  (fcoo-jaos),  the  same  for  all 
beings,  no  one  of  gods  or  men  has  made ;  but  it  was  always 
and  is  and  shall  be  ever-living  fire,  with  measures  kind- 
ling and  measures  going  out"  (B20,  D30).  Sea  and 
earth  must  therefore  represent  transformations  of  fire 
(B21,  D31),  and  fire  is  thus  both  the  cosmic  process  of 
transformation  and  also  one  of  the  stages  of  the  process. 
No  doubt  Heraclitus  was  combining  the  notions  of  com- 
bustion (process)  and  of  flame  (thing),  in  somewhat  the 

2cf.  Maine,  Ancient  Law,  pp.  387-9;  Gilbert,  Gk.  Const.  Antiq.,  p.  125 
(and  the  authorities  there  quoted),  pp.  131-4,  138-40;  Lipsius,  Attisches 
Recht,  II,  l,  p.  1 ;  Aristotle,  Atk.  Pol.  VIII,  26  Sandys  (IX,  1  Blass).  For  the 
analogy  between  social  and  natural  law  see  above,  p.  18. 

[56] 


HERACLITUS 

same  way  as  a  modern  physicist  might  speak  of  electricity 
as  a  mode  of  behavior  of  matter  and  as  electrons,  only  it 
is  doubtful  if  Heraclitus  clearly  distinguished  the  two 
notions.  It  is  only  fair  to  him  to  recognize  that  if  every- 
thing is  in  flux,  not  even  fire  can  be  excepted,  so  that  the 
"thing"  called  fire  must  be  in  the  end  only  a  stage  in  the 
ultimate  process.  Yet  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  a  con- 
fusion of  thought  lurks  behind  the  phrases  in  which  Hera- 
clitus speaks  of  his  principle,  and  that  this  confusion  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  he  had  only  partially  freed  his  mind 
from  the  old  notion  of  the  principle  as  the  material  out  of 
which  present  forms  have  arisen. 

8.  If  the  world  is  really  a  unified  process  whose  essence 
is  fire,  then  not  only  do  opposites  pass  into  one  another, 
but  they  are  identical.  From  the  cosmic  point  of  view  of 
the  understanding,  opposites  are  transformations  of  the 
same  fire  and  are  passing  through  the  same  process,  and 
even  the  upward  and  the  downward  paths  are  one  and  the 
same  (B69,  D60).  Heraclitus  never  tires  of  asserting 
the  identity  of  things  which  are  ordinarily  considered 
opposites — day  and  night,  winter  and  summer,  life  and 
death,  harmony  and  discord,  and  even  good  and  bad. 
These  assertions  can  only  be  intelligible  as  implying  the 
ultimate  unity  of  the  world  and  as  based  upon  the  distinc- 
tion between  sense  experience  and  understanding;  that  is, 
opposites  are  identical  only  for  the  understanding  and  only 
because  they  are  ultimately  the  same  cosmic  fire.  Professor 
Burnet  holds  that  Heraclitus  did  not  mean  "that  good  is 
evil  or  that  evil  is  good,  but  simply  that  they  are  two 
inseparable  halves  of  one  and  the  same  thing"  (p.  166)  ; 
but  Heraclitus  might  well  maintain  that  the  two  halves 
are  the  same  thing.  His  meaning  can  be  made  quite  clear 
by  putting  his  statement  that  "to  God  all  things  are  fair 

l  57  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

and  good  and  just,  but  men  hold  some  things  unjust  and 
some  things  just"  (B61,  D102)  together  with  the  other 
statement  that  "the  character  of  man  has  no  wisdom,  but 
that  of  god  has"  (B96,  D78).  The  distinction  between 
good  and  evil,  which  is  typical  of  all  opposites,  is  sensible 
to  beings  who  lack  wisdom  and  understanding,  but  dis- 
appears for  god  and  the  author,  who  have  understanding 
of  the  cosmic  unity.  Hence  the  real  unity  of  the  world 
involves  not  only  the  passage  of  opposites  into  each  other, 
but  also  the  final  identity  of  opposites  for  the  understand- 
ing; and  the  full  appreciation  of  this  fact  is  the  ground 
for  the  author's  attitude  of  superiority  toward  previous 
thinkers  and  the  common  people. 

9.  If  we  ask  why  Heraclitus  selected  fire,  rather  than 
sea  or  earth,  for  his  principle,  we  get  no  direct  answer 
from  him;  but  we  may  be  sure  it  was  in  general  because 
of  the  three  things  fire  alone  could  perform  the  functions 
required  by  the  system.  More  specifically  the  notion  of 
constant  activity  implied  in  the  flux  was  not  associated 
with  earth,  and  the  notion  of  intelligent  self-direction 
implied  in  the  cosmic  harmony  was  not  associated  with 
sea;  while  both  these  attributes  were  connected  with  fire 
through  the  intermediate  notion  of  soul.  Probably  many 
features  of  the  principle,  as  Heraclitus  conceived  it,  were 
based  upon  an  analogy  between  macrocosm  and  micro- 
cosm, which  was  generally  presupposed  in  Greek  phi- 
losophy; and  a  study  of  the  author's  conception  of  the 
human  soul  will  thus  facilitate  an  understanding  of  his 
cosmic  principle. 

It  is  evident  that  Heraclitus  had  advanced  beyond  the 
Homeric  idea  of  soul  as  a  shade  which  only  came  into 
being  at  death,  and  that  he  believed  in  a  soul  that  was  the 
principle  of  life  in  the  body.  When  he  says:  "it  is  diffi- 

r.  58] 


HERACLITUS 

cult  to  fight  with  desire,  and  yet  that  which  it  wishes  it 
buys  at  the  cost  of  soul"  (B  105-7,  D85),  he  must  be 
thinking  of  soul  as  a  force  at  work  in  living  bodies;  and 
it  is  natural  to  suppose  that  this  idea  was  at  least  partialty 
the  result  of  the  mysteries,  which  had  such  a  profound 
impression  on  Pythagoras.  Moreover,  we  have  already 
seen  that  Heraclitus  connected  understanding  directly 
with  the  soul,  which  must  therefore  be  considered  the 
principle  of  real  knowledge.  Finally  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  he  identified  the  soul  with  fire,  and  thought  of  it  as 
an  epitome  of  the  cosmic  principle.  "It  is  death  to  souls 
to  become  water"  (B68,  D36),  because  souls  are  fire, 
and  in  general  life,  sleep,  and  death  correspond  to  fire, 
water,  and  earth  respectively.3  "The  dry  soul  is  the  wisest 
and  best,"4  because  the  soul  is  fiery  by  nature  and  can 
best  exercise  its  faculty  of  understanding  when  in  its 
naturally  pure  condition.  In  short,  the  soul  of  man  was 
for  Heraclitus  the  principle  of  intelligent  self -direction, 
in  the  form  of  fire  in  the  body. 

It  is  impossible  to  get  from  the  extant  fragments  the 
author's  idea  of  the  relation  of  human  souls  to  the  cosmic 
principle  of  fire;  but  he  speaks  as  if  they  were  fractions 
of  the  whole.  Probably  at  death  a  soul  might  take  the 
downward  path  to  earth  and  lose  its  individuality,  or  it 
might  continue  its  separate  existence  in  another  shape 
as  a  guardian  demon  of  the  living  and  the  dead  (B  123, 
D63),  the  issue  being  determined  by  the  character  mani- 
fested during  life.  "Gods  and  heroes"  are  no  doubt  souls 
who  have  justified  their  semi-independent  life,  and  from 
this  point  of  view  they  are  the  same  as  mortals  (B67, 

3  Burnet,  Gk.  Phil.  I,  p.  60. 

4  B 74-6.  The  reading  is  doubtful.  Diels   (118)   has:  "Dry  light  is  the 
wisest  and  best  soul." 

r.  591 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

D62).  Moreover  several  of  the  fragments  suggest  a  belief 
in  reincarnation,  which  would  be  simply  the  reverse  of 
the  process  from  life  to  death. 

10.  After  this  we  shall  not  be  surprised  to  find  that 
Heraclitus  thought  of  the  cosmic  fire  or  principle  of  the 
world  as  soul  and  as  god.  "You  could  not  find  the  limits 
of  soul  by  travelling,  so  deep  a  measure  has  it"  (B71, 
D45) — this  is  intelligible  if  soul  is  the  immanent  prin- 
ciple of  the  world.  "The  wise  alone  is  one,  and  it  is  willing 
and  unwilling  to  be  called  by  the  name  Zeus"  (B65, 
D32) — this  must  mean  that  the  principle  is  the  only 
unity  in  the  world,  that  it  is  endowed  with  wisdom,  and 
that  it  can  be  spoken  of  as  Zeus,  if  that  epithet  does  not 
suggest  the  whimsical  personality  who  goes  by  the  name  in 
Homer.  And  so  for  human  beings,  "wisdom  is  one,  to 
know  the  thought  which  steers  all  things  through  all 
things"  (B  19,  D41).  The  fire  which  is  the  principle  of 
the  world  is  god,  because  it  has  the  capacity  for  spon- 
taneous movement ;  and  it  is  soul,  because  it  is  intelligent. 

11.  It  is  obvious  that  several  features  of  Heraclitus' 
cosmological  doctrines  had  ethical  implications,  and  three 
of  these  are  important  enough  to  deserve  our  attention. 
In  the  first  place,  after  the  emphasis  Heraclitus  has  placed 
on  the  understanding,  both  as  a  means  of  gaining  true 
knowledge  and  as  an  attribute  of  god,  we  are  not  sur- 
prised to  find  him  saying  that  "understanding  is  the  great- 
est virtue,  and  wisdom  is  to  speak  true  things  and  to  act 
needfully  according  to  the  nature  of  the  world"  (B107, 
D112).  From  its  inception  in  Miletus,  cosmological  in- 
quiry had  been  predicated  upon  an  impulse  to  explain  and 
to  understand,  and  in  the  Pythagorean  practice  this  in- 
quiry had  apparently  been  held  up  as  the  best  way  of  life; 
but  it  was  Heraclitus  who  first  explicitly  maintained  that 

[fen 


HERACLITUS 

understanding  was  the  chief  virtue  or  excellence  of  man, 
and  that  knowledge  of  the  principle  of  nature  suggested 
a  life  in  accordance  with  the  operation  of  this  principle. 
In  the  next  place,  Heraclitus  believed  that  as  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  world,  fire  or  soul,  was  the  hidden  unity  that 
underlay  the  apparent  diversity  of  all  things,  it  was  in 
reality  "common"  to  all  things,  and  to  live  according 
to  nature  is  thus  to  "follow  the  common"  (B92,  D2). 
But  to  live  according  to  nature  is  wisdom  or  understanding 
on  the  part  of  men,  and  the  common  principle  of  the  world 
is  the  divine  thought  which  steers  all  things,  so  that  the 
injunction  to  follow  the  common  means  that  the  thought 
of  men  has  the  capacity  of  direct  communion  with  the 
divine  thought.  It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  in  these 
ideas  Heraclitus  had  been  influenced  by  the  mystical  doc- 
trines. Obviously  too  it  was  only  through  the  understand- 
ing, or  (in  physical  terms)  a  perfectly  dry  condition  of 
soul,  that  men  could  appreciate  the  divine  wisdom;  and 
this  leads  the  author  to  condemn  the  crowd,  who  live  as  if 
they  had  a  private  or  uncommon  wisdom,  and  wanton 
seekers  after  pleasure,  whose  souls  are  cut  off  from  the 
common  wisdom  just  as  much  as  if  they  were  asleep. 
Heraclitus  also  believed  that  the  common  was  embodied 
in  the  constitution  of  a  city,  and  he  accordingly  urged  the 
people  to  fight  for  their  laws  as  for  their  walls  (B100, 
D44). 

In  the  third  place,  for  the  understanding  even  the  dis- 
tinction between  good  and  evil  disappears ;  and  as  Hera- 
clitus held  that  men  had  the  capacity  to  understand ',  he 
may  have  believed  that  it  was  possible  to  advance  to  a 
position  where  the  distinction  between  good  and  evil  was 
meaningless — at  least  he  himself  had  advanced  to  that 
point.  But  he  does  not  develop  the  thought  further.  This 

[61 n 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

reference  to  a  condition  beyond  good  and  evil,  together 
with  the  doctrine  of  the  common,  and  the  emphasis  on 
wisdom,  indicate  plainly  enough  that  presocratic  cos- 
mology was  not  without  an  ethical  interest. 

12.  Finally  there  is  a  logical  aspect  of  Heraclitus' 
thought,  which  must  be  noticed.  In  one  way  or  another  we 
have  seen  him  identify  the  principle  of  the  world  with 
fire,  god,  soul,  understanding,  law,  and  virtue.  These 
latter  are  not  described  as  different  aspects  or  roles  or 
forms  of  the  one  principle,  but  the  principle  is  said  to  be 
these  various  things.  It  is  evident  that  such  usage,  as  well 
as  the  identification  of  opposites,  raises  the  question  of 
the  ultimate  significance  of  predicates,  and  in  general 
of  the  nature  of  thought.  On  this  point  Heraclitus  had 
nothing  to  say,  but  it  was  on  this  point  that  he  was  at- 
tacked by  the  next  philosopher,  Parmenides. 


CHAPTER  V 

PARMENIDES 

l.  Parmenides  was  a  native  of  Elea  or  Velia,  a  Greek 
colony  on  the  southwestern  coast  of  Italy.  His  date  is 
quite  uncertain,  but  he  probably  lived  through  the  first 
half  of  the  fifth  century  b.c.  There  was  a  story  that  he 
had  been  a  pupil  of  Xenophanes,  and  another  to  the  effect 
that  he  had  been  associated  with  a  Pythagorean ;  the  latter 
may  very  well  be  true,  for  there  are  Pythagorean  elements 
in  his  doctrines,  but  the  former  is  very  doubtful.  Parmeni- 
des was  either  the  founder  or  the  chief  figure  of  a  school 
of  philosophy,  known  as  the  Eleatic  and  numbering 
among  its  members  Zeno,  the  author  of  the  famous  para- 
doxes. Parmenides  set  forth  his  philosophy  in  a  poem, 
large  portions  of  which  have  been  preserved;  but  the 
metrical  form  was  not  a  happy  experiment,  and  Parmeni- 
des seems  to  have  had  very  little  poetry  in  his  soul. 

2.  The  understanding  of  his  view  of  the  world  is  com- 
plicated by  the  fact  that  it  seems  to  be  double,  one  com- 
plete system  being  expounded  in  that  part  of  the  poem 
called  The  Way  of  Truth,  while  another  and  incom- 
patible interpretation  is  sketched  in  The  Way  of  Opin- 
ion. The  difficulty  is  made  specific  by  the  author's  own 
statement  that  the  former  of  these  Ways  contains  the  true 
account  of  the  world,  while  the  latter  is  false  and  decep- 
tive. That  being  the  case,  why  did  he  set  forth  a  worthless 
doctrine,  after  giving  the  true  one*?  And  so  some  historians 

C633 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

of  philosophy  have  refused  to  accept  literally  the  author's 
expressed  judgment  of  The  Way  of  Opinion  and  have  at- 
tributed to  it  a  measure  of  truth,  while  others  have  taken 
his  words  at  their  face  value  and  have  busied  themselves 
with  reasons  why  he  should  publish  this  false  theory. 

3.  The  poem  commences  with  an  apocalyptic  Intro- 
duction, the  significance  of  which  constitutes  another, 
though  a  minor,  problem  for  the  historian.  But  we  shall 
leave  this  for  the  present,  and  turn  straight  to  The  Way 
of  Truth,  in  which  the  author  professes  to  develop  the  true 
account  of  the  world.  Here  we  seem  to  be  in  quite  a  dif- 
ferent intellectual  situation  from  that  which  was  char- 
acteristic of  the  previous  thinkers.  We  seem  to  start  with 
a  concept  called  What-is,  whose  content  is  never  filled 
in  with  objects  of  experience,  but  which  evidently  refers 
to  the  world  as  a  whole.  Its  existence  is  said  to  be  neces- 
sarily implied  by  thought.  Its  attributes  also  are  not  de- 
rived from  perceptions,  but  are  deduced  as  corollaries  of 
the  bare  concept  itself.  This  method  of  exposition  finally 
yields  a  conclusion  to  the  following  effect:  What-is  (the 
world)  must  be  and  is  an  uncreated,  indestructible,  im- 
movable, indivisible,  finite,  spherical  continuum. 

4.  The  first  thing  to  notice  is  that  Parmenides  seems  to 
be  aware  of  the  novelty  of  his  method.  At  the  end  of  the 
Introduction,  he  prepares  his  readers  by  stating  that  what 
is  coming  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  "proof,"  which  they  are 
to  judge  by  reasoning  or  argument ;  and  The  Way  of  Truth 
opens  with  an  exhortation  to  use  the  mind.  This  intel- 
lectual procedure  is  contrasted  with  the  habitual  inquiry 
by  eye,  ear,  and  tongue;1  and  the  contrast  reminds  us  of 

1  frag.  1,  lines  33-6.  Burnet,  p.  173,  n.  1,  points  out  that  Parmenides  was 
the  first  to  use  X67oi  in  the  sense  of  (dialectical)  argument.  It  is  important 
to  realize  that  what  Parmenides  meant  by  the  term  was  a  new  thing  in 
Greek  philosophy. 

[    64    ] 


PARMENIDES 

that  which  Heraclitus  drew  between  the  understanding 
and  the  senses,  but  it  turns  out  to  be  quite  different.  The 
basis  of  the  distinction  is  the  same  for  both  authors, 
namely  between  the  mind  and  the  senses ;  but  in  Parmeni- 
des  the  mind  yields  a  truth  that  is  proved,  and  this  proof 
is  the  feature  which  is  new. 

The  previous  systems  of  cosmology  started  with  empiri- 
cal facts,  like  combustion  (Heraclitus),  or  evaporation 
and  condensation  (Anaximenes  and  possibly  Thales),  or 
the  obvious  changes  produced  by  the  interaction  of  two 
physical  elements  (Anaximander  and  probably  Pythago- 
ras) .  These  primary  facts  were  used  to  explain  other  phe- 
nomena or  supposed  phenomena  by  analogy,  and  this  use 
resulted  in  formulae  for  water  condensing  into  earth  and 
stones  (Anaximenes) ,  wind  arising  from  sea(  Xenophanes) , 
fire  turning  into  sea  and  sea  into  fire  (Heraclitus).  These 
secondary  principles  are  to  be  considered  as  theoretical  ex- 
tensions of  experience,  or  analogical  generalizations  from 
observed  facts.  On  top  of  them  there  is  a  third  stratum  of 
pure  theory,  chiefly  on  the  subject  of  creation,  like  the 
supposition  of  Anaximenes  that  from  air  "gods  and  things 
divine  took  their  rise,  while  other  things  come  from  its 
offspring,"  or  the  doctrine  of  Heraclitus  that  god  is  "the 
thought  which  steers  all  things  through  all  things."  These 
theories  were  probably  also  analogical,  though  they  seem 
to  us  to  be  so  far  removed  from  any  premisses  in  experience 
that  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  reconstruct  their  derivation 
with  any  assurance. jBut  we  may  at  least  think  of  the  pre- 
Parmenidean  systems  as  composed  of  a  basis  of  empiri- 
cal fact,  a  middle  layer  of  analogy,  and  a  crown  of 
speculation.  1 

If  we  now  turn  to  The  Way  of  Truth,  we  shall  find  that 
the  foregoing  description  will  not  apply  to  it.  It  starts 

C65 : 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

with  no  observed  phenomena,  it  contains  no  appeals  to 
facts  in  support  of  its  conclusions,  and  its  thought  is  not 
developed  by  analogical  processes.  Parmenides  seems  to 
start  with  the  concept  of  What-is,  which  we  must  regard 
as  an  intuition  referring  to  the  whole  of  what  exists.  He 
then  proceeds  to  manipulate  this  concept  by  analysis  and 
synthesis,  in  a  series  of  logical  processes  which  sometimes 
seem  like  syllogistic  reasoning,  while  at  other  times  they 
are  little  more  than  immediate  inference.2  All  the  argu- 
ments stick  so  closely  to  the  central  concept  of  What-is 
that  they  are  interdependent  to  a  high  degree,  and  it  is 
no  doubt  this  feature  that  leads  the  author  to  remark: 
"It  is  all  one  to  me  where  I  begin,  for  I  shall  come  back 
there  again"  (3).  The  process  is,  however,  inferential, 
and  in  this  respect  is  to  be  contrasted  with  the  method 
of  previous  thinkers,  which  consisted  in  making  a  prin- 
ciple plausible  by  explaining  phenomena  by  it. 

5.  We  must  next  ask  why  Parmenides  believed  the  old 
method  of  cosmological  investigation  was  erroneous.  On 
this  point  he  makes  three  important  statements :  first,  this 
false  philosophy  amounts  to  saying  that  "it  is  and  is  not 
the  same  and  not  the  same,  and  all  things  travel  in  oppo- 
site directions";  second,  it  depends  on  the  existence  of 
What-is-not ;  third,  it  is  the  belief  of  stupid  mortals.3 

The  first  of  these  indictments  must  refer  specifically 
to  Heraclitus,  and  it  can  only  mean  that  Heraclitus  had 
reduced  philosophy  to  nonsense  by  affirming  that  a  thing 
is  identical  with  its  opposite.  We  may  recall  such  frag- 
ments of  the  Ephesian  thinker  as  "Mortals  are  immor- 
tals," "The  way  up  and  the  way  down  is  one  and  the 

2  "Vraie  geometrie  de  l'Etre,"  Croiset,  Hist.  II,  p.  524. 

3  frag.  6,  11.  8,  9 ;  frag.  4,  1.  5,  and  frag.  7 ;  frag.  6,  11.  4-6,  and  frag.  8, 
11.51,52. 

r.  663 


PARMENIDES 

same,"  and  "It  rests  by  changing."  Parmenides  makes  the 
point  that  if  things  are  identical  with  their  opposites,  then 
everything  is  only  a  name  which  has  no  object  correspond- 
ing to  it.4  On  this  basis  thought  cannot  operate,  for 
thought  must  have  some  definite  objective  reference — 
"something  that  is,  as  to  which  it  is  uttered"  (8).  Hence 
Parmenides  lays  down  a  principle:  what  can  be  thought 
and  what  can  be  are  the  same  (5).  But  this  principle  has 
a  positive  and  a  negative  form.  Positively,  it  means  that 
what  can  be  thought  is  (6)  ;  that  is,  a  true  thought  carries 
the  implication  of  an  object  which  is  possible  and  neces- 
sary and  real.  Thus  truth  is  the  concern  of  mind  or 
thought,  rather  than  of  the  senses ;  and  what  is  thinkable 
and  can  be  proved  has  an  object  which  exists. 

The  negative  form  of  this  principle  leads  to  the  second 
of  the  three  points  mentioned  above.  If  what  can  be 
thought  and  what  can  be  are  the  same,  then  what  is  not 
cannot  be  thought,  that  is,  it  is  unthinkable  (4) .  There  is 
also  the  implication  that  what  cannot  be  thought  as  true 
does  not  exist  and  is  nothing.5  Now  when  Parmenides 
speaks  of  What-is-not,  he  must  be  referring  to  empty 
space,  which  had  been  implied  by  Heraclitus  and  earlier 
thinkers  in  their  accounts  of  change.  The  error  of  these 
thinkers  lay  in  naming  two  things,  a  substance  like  fire, 
and  a  mediutfi  of  change,  like  darkness  or  air  which  was 
confused  with  empty  space  (8,  line  53).  Now  empty 
space  is  nothing  and  therefore  cannot  be.  But  if  so,  then 
motion  is  impossible,  and  coming  into  being,  passing 
away,  change,  and  alteration  are  nothing  but  names  which 
have  no  reality  (8,  line  38). 

This  brings  us  to  the  third  point.  All  previous  philoso- 

4  frag.  8,  1.  38;  cf.  1.  53,  and  frag.  9,  1.  1. 

5  cf.  frag.  8,  11.  9,  10  with  frag.  6,  1.  15. 

[67  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

phers  had  employed  the  notion  of  change,  and  in  fact 
it  is  a  common  notion  of  all  mortals.  Heraclitus  had 
merely  carried  the  idea  to  its  logical  conclusion,  and  this 
conclusion  made  thought  impossible.  The  Milesians  had 
started  with  the  notion  of  a  changing  substance;  Hera- 
clitus showed  that  if  the  notion  of  change  were  logically 
worked  out,  it  must  apply  to  the  substance  itself,  and 
then  there  is  no  self -identical  substance  at  all — nothing 
is  left  but  a  process.  Parmenides  therefore  turns  away 
from  the  concept  of  change,  to  develop  the  concept  of 
substance ;  and  he  shows  that  if  you  work  out  this  concept 
logically,  change  becomes  impossible.  The  "beliefs  of 
mortals"  thus  include  all  thought  which  involves  the 
notion  of  change. 

6.  We  must  now  examine  Parmenides'  conception  of 
truth  and  reason.  From  his  own  statements  we  have 
already  gathered  that  truth  rested  on  proof,  and  reason 
was  the  "way"  of  proving  a  proposition.  Now  this  view 
is  almost  identical  with  the  typical  position  of  rhetoric, 
and  I  shall  accordingly  examine  the  latter  in  order  to  see 
whether  it  may  not  throw  some  light  on  The  Way  of 
Truth. 

Cicero  claimed  that  Aristotle  said  rhetoric  originated 
in  law-suits  for  the  restoration  of  property,  which  fol- 
lowed the  expulsion  of  the  tyrants  from  Syracuse  about 
465  b.c.;6  but  Diogenes  asserted  that  Aristotle  said 
Empedocles  was  the  founder  of  rhetoric,  and  we  have 
reason  to  believe  that  Empedocles'  speeches,  made  in 
Acragas  a  few  years  after  the  fall  of  Thrasydeus  in  472 
b.c,  were  marked  by  certain  conscious  artistic  traits  which 

6  Brutus,  46. 

C68  3 


PARMENIDES 

Gorgias  afterwards  developed.7  Now  these  two  statements 
are  not  far  apart,  and  they  indicate  that  rhetorical  devices 
were  being  employed  in  public  arguments  in  Sicily  about 
470  b.c.  We  do  not  know  when  The  Way  of  Truth  was 
composed ;  but  if  we  accept  Burnet's  chronology,  to  which 
I  am  inclined,  Parmenides  would  have  been  forty-five 
years  old  in  470.8  I  see  therefore  no  chronological  impos- 
sibility in  supposing  that  the  Eleatic  philosopher  was 
acquainted  with  the  beginnings  of  rhetoric  when  he  wrote 
his  poem.  Nor  do  I  believe  the  difference  in  locality  makes 
this  unlikely,  as  there  is  evidence  of  intellectual  inter- 
course among  the  cities  of  western  Hellas  at  that  date. 

But  it  is  unnecessary  to  posit  any  actual  influence  of 
Sicilian  rhetoric  on  The  Way  of  Truth — we  may  regard 
each  of  them  as  typical  but  independent  manifestations 
of  the  spirit  of  Greek  civilization  in  the  West.  In  order  to 
appreciate  this  spirit,  let  us  recall  that  during  the  first 
half  of  the  fifth  century  there  was  displayed  at  various 
points  in  this  region  great  originality  in  the  development 
of  medicine,  religion,  political  constitutions,  philosophy, 
and  rhetorical  argumentation.  Even  as  early  as  the  time 
of  Polycrates  of  Samos  and  of  Pisistratus,  the  Crotoniates 
had  been  noted  for  their  physicians  ;9  and  in  the  next  cen- 
tury, interest  in  medicine  and  physiology  was  stimulated 
by  the  investigations  of  Alcmeon  at  Croton,  Parmenides 
at  Elea,  and  Empedocles  at  Acragas.10  The  spirit  of  sci- 
ence was  also  at  work  in  the  Pythagorean  development  of 
harmonics  and  geometry,  and  the  biological  researches 

7  Diog.  L.  VIII,  57  DFV,  p.  150;  Satyrus  ap.  Diog.  VIII,  58;  Quintilian 
III,  l,  8;  cf.  Diels  Empedokles  und  Gorgias. 

8  Burnet,  pp.  169,  170. 

9  Herod.  Ill,  131. 

10Wachtler,  De  Alcmaeone  Crotoniata,  p.  91;   Julius   Sander,  Alkmaon 
von  Kroton,  p.  7;  Parmenides,  frags.  16,  17;  Empedocles,  frags.  61  /. 

I  69  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

and  experiments  of  Empedocles.  In  religion  there  was  the 
great  vitality  and  the  rapid  propagation  of  Orphicism  in 
southern  Italy  and  Sicily,  as  well  as  the  more  local  and 
more  violent  rise  of  Pythagoreanism.11  Furthermore  there 
was  a  great  political  ferment  in  various  cities,  the  most 
obvious  instances  being  Croton,  Syracuse,  and  Acragas; 
and  though  the  occasions  for  these  movements  seem  to 
have  been  often  disconnected  one  with  another,  yet  they  all 
appear  to  have  rested  on  the  assertion  of  democratic  princi- 
ples in  some  form  and  to  have  involved  the  invention  of 
new  political  institutions.  Finally,  we  must  notice  the  great 
originality  of  reflective  thought  which  was  manifested  by 
Xenophanes,  Pythagoras,  Parmenides,  Empedocles,  and 
Zeno,  and  in  rhetoric  by  Corax,  Tisias  (or  Teisias),  and 
Gorgias.  The  mere  catalog  of  these  various  new  activi- 
ties should  suggest  to  our  minds  the  spirit  of  freedom, 
the  desire  for  something  better,  the  impulse  to  invention, 
which  seem  to  have  characterized  western  Hellas  at  this 
time.  It  would  in  fact  appear  that  the  great  originality 
of  the  Greek  genius,  which  had  heretofore  been  at  home 
chiefly  in  Ionia,  had  now  passed  to  the  colonies  of  Italy 
and  Sicily  for  a  brief  but  vigorous  effervescence,  before  its 
various  phases  were  caught  up  in  the  culture  of  Athens. 

The  particular  aspect  of  this  genius  in  which  we  are 
now  interested  is  the  new  use  of  reason,  which  we  see  in 
certain  writers  of  this  period.  It  would  of  course  be  absurd 
to  imagine  that  the  human  mind  before  that  time  had 
been  innocent  of  the  process  we  know  as  reason;  and  yet 
upon  a  thorough  examination  of  previous  literature  we 
are  surprised  at  the  primitive  simplicity  of  illative  se- 

11  Ed.  Meyer,  Gesckichte  d.  Alt.,  II,  arts.  453-60;  Rohde,  "Die  Quellen  des 
Iamblichus  in  seiner  Biographie  des  Pythagoras"  in  Rhein.  Mus.  XXVII, 
and  Burnet,  pp.  87-92. 

C703 


PARMENIDES 

quences.  I  have  already  observed  that  pre-Parmenidean 
philosophy  seemed  content  in  the  main  with  what  might 
be  called  analogical  generalization,  and  I  have  also  re- 
marked that  with  Heraclitus,  in  whose  system  the  method 
is  most  typical,  the  quality  of  explanation  toward  which 
he  implicitly  worked  was  a  general  plausibility.  Now  this 
plausibility  always  connoted  an  ultimate  reference  to  an 
objective  fact  or  set  of  facts,  so  that  the  arguments  from 
analogy  were  to  be  judged  in  the  end  according  to  their 
correspondence  with  facts.  But  in  Parmenides'  Way  of 
Truth  there  is  no  specific  external  situation  to  start  with, 
but  only  an  idea;  and  in  Tisias'  rhetorical  arguments  the 
external  situation  is  in  dispute,  so  that  the  final  criterion 
of  judgment  is  a  complicated  set  of  mental  factors  com- 
prising the  general  notion  of  probability.  In  such  cases 
the  appeal  to  facts  was  impossible,  and  judgment  had  to 
be  based  on  the  inner  consistency  of  the  argument.  In  other 
words  both  the  philosopher  and  the  rhetorician  tried  to 
make  you  believe  something  because  it  was  implied  in 
your  thinking,  without  regard  to  external  facts.  And  that 
was  a  new  position  in  Greek  thought. 

In  illustration  of  the  new  method,  we  may  cite  the 
typical  argument  attributed  to  the  early  rhetoricians,  and 
several  specimens  from  The  Way  of  Truth.  Corax  and 
Tisias  are  said  to  have  become  famous  by  their  use  of  the 
argument  from  probability  (to  ei/cds),  and  their  cases 
rested  in  the  end  on  a  proposition  in  the  form :  "it  is  likely 
that  .  .  .  (e.g.  a  small  weak  man  would  not  by  himself 
attack  a  big  strong  one)."12  Here  the  appeal  is  not  to  an 
actual,  external  situation,  but  to  a  subjective  feeling  of 
likelihood.  In  The  Way  of  Truth,  this  argument  appears 

12  Arist.,  Rhet^  II,  24  (IX).  1402  a  8;  Plato,  Phaedrus,  267  a,  273;  Blass, 
Bered.,  I,  p.  19 ;  Croiset,  Hist.  IV,  p.  40. 

C  71  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

in  the  expression:  "it  must  needs  be  that  .  .  .,"  that  is, 
one  must  believe  that  .  .  .;  and  the  converse  is:  "it  can 
never  be  proved  that.  .  .  ."  The  whole  argument  was 
a  matter  of  what  could  be  proved,  and  the  proof  depended 
on  subjective  assent  to  a  logical  manipulation  of  ideas. 

7.  The  next  question  will  concern  the  validity  of  rea- 
son, as  conceived  by  Parmenides.  His  appeal  to  reason 
had  resulted  not  only  in  failure  to  explain  any  and  all 
phenomena  of  nature,  but  also  in  conclusions  violently 
opposed  to  all  experience  and  common  sense.  Change  is 
an  obvious  and  wellnigh  universal  factor  in  the  world, 
as  we  perceive  it;  and  yet  reason  denied  change.  What 
right  or  prerogative  had  reason,  so  that  it  could  deny  the 
plain  evidence  of  the  senses'? 

Here  we  shall  be  greatly  aided,  I  believe,  by  our  under- 
standing of  rhetoric.  We  are  told  that  the  Sicilian  rhetori- 
cians taught  their  pupils  to  argue  on  both  sides  of  any 
case,  and  this  suggests  that  they  were  striving  for  logical 
proof  rather  than  correspondence  with  objective  facts.13 
Yet  it  must  have  been  as  obvious  to  those  gentlemen  as  it  is 
to  us  that  two  contradictory  propositions  cannot  both  be 
right.  To  be  sure,  the  principle  of  contradiction  had  not 
yet  been '  enunciated,  and  doubtless  theoretical  under- 
standing of  it  was  entirely  lacking,  or  Plato  would  not 
have  been  at  such  pains  to  go  into  the  minutiae  of  it  much 
later.  But  even  in  the  minds  of  Corax  and  Tisias,  there 
would  have  been  no  dubiety  on  such  a  concrete  point  as 
that  the  small  weak  man  either  did  or  did  not  attack  the 
big  strong  one.  If  they  were  ready  to  argue  both  sides  of 
such  a  case,  it  must  have  been  because  they  would  be 

13  In  the  Phaedrus,  272  d  7,  where  the  conversation  is  on  rhetoric, 
Socrates  remarks :  "In  the  law-courts  people  care  absolutely  nothing  about 
truth,  but  only  about  what  will  persuade,  and  that  is  probability." 

C72: 


PARMENIDES 

satisfied  with  a  proof  which  was  divorced  from  appeal 
to  facts. 

This  surmise  is  confirmed  by  Sophistry.  The  Sophists 
that  we  meet  in  Plato's  Dialogues  were  not  mere  dra- 
matic fictions;  they  are  at  worst  caricatures,  which  must 
have  had  some  basis  in  fact  to  give  them  point;  and  for 
some  of  them  we  have  independent  testimony,  which 
tends  to  corroborate  the  main  features  of  Plato's  picture. 
Now  these  Sophists,  on  the  formal  side  of  their  teaching, 
were  the  intellectual  heirs  of  the  early  rhetoricians,14  and 
it  is  noteworthy  that  Plato  often  represents  them  as  argu- 
ing in  precisely  the  same  way  as  their  rhetorical  proto- 
types. For  instance,  in  the  Euthydemus  (283),  Dionyso- 
dorus  maintains  that  the  friends  of  Clinias,  by  wishing 
him  to  become  wise,  in  reality  wish  him  no  longer  to  be 
what  he  is,  which  means  that  they  wish  him  to  perish. 
Why  was  such  patently  false  juggling  of  ideas  tolerated'? 
why  did  it  even  seem  interesting*?  It  could  only  be  so 
because  of  a  popular  delight  in  trying  to  prove  anything 
under  the  sun;  verisimilitude  was  not  the  desideratum, 
and  the  sole  interest  lay  in  seeing  what  paradoxical  con- 
clusion could  be  proved  by  the  unaided  reason.  The 
Sophists  were  thus  like  the  rhetoricians  in  their  willing- 
ness to  play  with  proofs,  even  when  these  proofs  yielded 
objective  references  that  were  absurd  or  manifestly  in- 
compatible with  known  facts. 

Furthermore  some  expressions  used  by  authors  in  the 
period  following  Parmenides  suggest  that  the  reason  was 
regarded  as  a  kind  of  tyrant,  whose  behests  must  be 

14  cf .  Blass,  Bered.,  p.  4 :  "Sophistik  und  Rhetorik  sind  nicht  identisch, 
aber  doch  mehr  dem  Namen  als  der  Sache  nach  getrannt  .  .  ." ;  Croiset, 
Abridged  History  (English  trans.),  pp.  281,  282:  "The  art  of  speech,  in  its 
two  principal  forms  of  eristic  and  rhetoric,  was  one  of  the  essential  aims 
of  sophistic  instruction." 

C  73  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

obeyed,  no  matter  what  the  consequences.  Herodotus  uses 
the  phrases  Xoyos  alpeeu  and  6  \6yos  eireicre;  and  Plato 
says:  "whithersoever  the  Xoyos,  like  a  wind,  bears  us, 
thither  we  must  go."15  Speaking  of  Plato  himself,  Jowett 
remarks  truly:  "He  belonged  to  an  age  in  which  men  felt 
too  strongly  the  first  pleasure  of  metaphysical  speculation 
to  be  able  to  estimate  the  true  value  of  the  ideas  which 
they  conceived."16  The  cosmic  Nous  or  Mind  of  Anaxa- 
goras  was  conceived  somewhat  differently  from  Logos; 
but  it  was  at  bottom  the  faculty  of  thought,  and  it  was 
described  as  autocratic  and  supreme,  the  epithets  of 
divinity.  All  these  conceptions  of  reason,  as  well  as  that 
of  Parmenides,  seem  to  suggest  that  reason  had  autocratic 
power  to  establish  its  conclusions.  These  early  Greeks, 
who  first  employed  the  reason  for  rhetorical,  sophistic,  or 
philosophical  purposes,  did  not  have  a  logical  apparatus 
at  their  disposal,  by  which  they  could  assess  the  worth  of 
their  instrument;  and  in  the  absence  of  this  critical  under- 
standing, they  regarded  an  inferential  proof  as  something 
peremptory  and  absolute. 

If  the  expressions  of  later  times  suggest  a  deification 
of  reason,  it  is  small  wonder  that  Parmenides  regarded  it 
as  a  goddess  of  truth.  He  was  the  first  to  employ  pure 
reason  in  philosophy;  it  yielded  strange  conclusions 
utterly  at  variance  with  sense  experience;  it  took  him,  as 
it  were,  to  another  realm,  "far  from  the  beaten  track  of 
men";  and  yet  these  conclusions  and  this  other  realm 
seemed  to  have  a  kind  of  divine  necessity  about  them, 
which  gave  them  a  transcendent  validity.  Reason  or  truth 

15  Herod.  I,  132;  II,  33;  III,  33;  VI,  35.  Plato,  Rep.,  Ill,  394  d  8;  cf.  &v 
(palrj  6  X670J,  Phaedo,  87  a  8.  In  Plato  the  word  takes  on  the  connotation  of 
argument,  or  reason  working  along  a  particular  line  within  self-imposed 
limits. 

16  The  Republic  of  Plato,  Index  s.v.  "idea." 

[  74  1 


PARMENIDES 

thus  tended  to  become  a  cosmic  agent,  and  Parmenides 
speaks  of  a  "force  of  truth"  which  will  not  allow  anything 
to  come  into  being  from  that  which  is  not  (8,  line  12). 
It  is  then  this  divine  force  of  truth  which  speaks  in  the 
poem  of  Parmenides,  and  if  its  statements  seem  improb- 
able to  mortals,  these  statements  are,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered, the  revelations  of  an  agent  beyond  the  reach  of 
mortal  senses.  It  would  therefore  appear  that  the  apoca- 
lyptic form  of  the  Introduction  and  the  poem  in  general 
was  due  to  the  author's  conception  of  reason  as  having 
some  divine  power;  and  we  naturally  do  not  understand 
the  situation  easily,  because  we  think  of  reason  as  an 
impersonal  machine. 

8.  Two  questions  now  remain  for  our  consideration; 
we  must  come  to  an  understanding  of  The  Way  of  Opin- 
ion, and  of  its  relation  to  the  Truth.  The  Way  of  Opinion 
professes  to  describe  the  opinions  of  mortals,  and  we  have 
already  seen  that  this  latter  phrase  refers  to  the  common 
explanation  of  the  world,  which  involves  the  notion  of 
change.  Now  The  Way  of  Truth  had  shown  that  the  world 
must  be  one  substance;  but  if  change  is  to  be  explained 
at  all,  that  can  be  done  only  by  the  use  of  two  things.  In 
other  words,  the  most  "likely"  interpretation  cannot  be 
made  on  the  Heraclitean  basis  of  one  substance  that  alters, 
but  must  rest  on  a  Pythagorean  basis  of  two  principles  or 
"forms"  of  things  that  interact;  and  certainly  if  you  are 
going  to  attempt  to  explain  change,  you  will  want  the 
most  likely  account  of  it  (8,  line  60).  It  is  thus  quite 
natural  that  The  Way  of  Opinion  should  contain  certain 
essential  features  of  the  Pythagorean  dualism.  But  since 
it  was  meant  as  the  most  likely  interpretation  of  the 
phenomena  of  change,  there  was  no  reason  why  it  should 
be  limited  to  Pythagorean  doctrines;  and  in  fact,  the 

[753 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

fragments  of  it  that  remain  read  like  the  latest  and  best 
cosmological  science,  without  reference  to  any  particular 
school  of  thought. 

It  would  appear  that  the  attention  of  cosmologists  was 
being  drawn  more  and  more  toward  terrestrial  phenom- 
ena, a  tendency  that  is  unmistakable  in  Empedocles,  but 
of  which  the  forerunner  is  evident  in  the  physiological 
theories  of  Parmenides  and  of  Alcmeon.  Aristotle  and 
Theophrastus  have  preserved  a  fragment  of  Parmenides' 
physiology,  in  which  he  speaks,  somewhat  obscurely,  of  a 
"mixture"  in  the  human  body;  and  Theophrastus  employs 
the  same  phrase  in  his  elucidation  of  the  passage.17  More- 
over in  the  same  fragment,  Parmenides  asserts  that  a  per- 
son's thought  depends  upon  "that  of  which  there  is  more 
in  him,"  which  Theophrastus  explains  as  the  preponder- 
ance of  the  light  or  dark  element  in  the  body.  These  re- 
marks would  suggest  that  Parmenides  believed  the  human 
body  was  composed  of  the  two  things,  which  he  calls  else- 
where the  forms  of  light  and  night,  or  fire  and  darkness; 
and  that  the  constitution  of  a  body  at  any  time  was  deter- 
mined by  the  proportion  in  which  these  things  or  forms 
were  mixed. 

The  idea  of  a  variable  proportion  would  seem  to  pre- 
suppose an  oscillation  of  the  two  elements  and  thus  to 
involve  the  old  notion  of  a  natural  Justice,  which  makes 
up  for  encroachment  by  permitting  an  opposite  one.  In 
this  connection,  it  is  interesting  to  recall  a  phrase  from 
the  apocalyptic  Introduction  of  the  poem:  "avenging 
Justice,"  who  is  described  as  keeper  of  the  keys  that  fit  the 
gates  of  the  ways  of  night  and  day  (l,  lines  11-14).  If 
we  wonder  why  the  divinity  who  controls  night  and  day 
is  called  Justice,  we  can  only  surmise  that  this  is  the  same 

17  frag.  16;  Arist.,  Met.,  Ill,  5.  1009  b  21 ;  Theo.,  De  Sensu,  3. 

C76  3 


PARMENIDES 

eternal  law  of  compensation,  to  which  Anaximander  and 
Heraclitus  had  alluded.  Moreover,  the  significance  of  the 
epithet  "avenging"  must  be  found  in  compensation  for 
encroachment — an  idea  which  recalls  the  Heraclitean 
notion  of  a  Justice  with  avenging  power  through  the 
Erinyes.  These  references  would  indicate  that  the  original 
notion  of  a  compensatory  regularity  was  still  in  the  mind 
of  Parmenides. 

On  the  other  hand,  Parmenides  also  uses  the  figure  of 
Necessity,  and  he  was  probably  the  first  thinker  to  em- 
ploy this  notion  for  cosmological  purposes.  Necessity  was 
an  Orphic  personage,  and  may  have  come  to  the  notice  of 
Parmenides  through  Pythagorean  sources.  In  The  Way  of 
Opinion,  a  divinity  which  must  be  identified  with  Neces- 
sity is  said  to  direct  the  course  of  all  things,  to  be  the 
beginner  of  pairing  and  birth,  and  to  have  created  Eros 
first  of  all  the  gods  (12,  13).  But  the  statement  that  is 
most  significant  is*  that  Necessity  took  the  heavens  and 
bound  them  to  keep  the  limits  of  the  stars  (1®,  lines  5-7). 
Remembering  that  this  is  cosmology  from  The  Way  of 
Opinion,  we  may  compare  with  it  two  phrases  from  The 
Way  of  Truth.  In  the  first,  Parmenides  says  that  strong 
Necessity  keeps  What-is  in  the  bonds  of  a  limit  which 
restrains  it  on  every  side;  in  the  second,  that  Fate  has 
bound  What-is  so  as  to  be  whole  and  immovable.18f}Tlius 
the  some  inexorable  force  which,  according  to  reason,  can- 
not allow  any  change,  is  for  cosmological  science  the  law 
which  makes  for  celestial  regularity.  These  different  roles 
played  by  Necessity,  as  well  as  the  use  of  both  Justice  and 
Necessity,  suggest  that  Parmenides  was  guilty  of  the  same 
confusion  of  thought,  on  the  subject  of  natural  regularity, 
as  we  found  in  Heraclitus.  But  the  name  Necessity  and 

is  frag.  8,  11.  30,  31 ;  11.  37.  38. 


& 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

several  of  the  references  to  it  in  the  poem  spring  from  the 
conception  of  an  absolute,  invariable  regularity,  com- 
parable to  the  preordained  limits  in  the  system  of  Hera- 
clitus  and  the  mathematical  law  of  Pythagoras.  And 
Parmenides'  use  of  this  concept  represents  a  further  step 
in  the  transition  from  the  old  Milesian  notion  of  natural 
Justice  and  Injustice  to  the  later  idea  of  mechanical  regu- 
larity, which  predominates  in  the  Atomist  system. 

Parmenides  regarded  the  heavenly  bodies  as  bands  of 
fire,  separated  from  one  another  by  intermediate  bands 
of  dark  air — a  view  which  was  ultimately  Milesian  but 
was  probably  also  held  by  Pythagoras.  Furthermore 
Parmenides  knew  that  the  moon  shone  by  the  reflected 
light  of  the  sun;  and  though  he  was  the  first  cosmologist 
to  mention  the  fact,  he  probably  did  not  discover  it.  Pro- 
fessor Burnet  is  no  doubt  correct  in  supposing  that  the 
discovery  was  made  within  the  Pythagorean  Order;  and 
this  was  probably  the  source  of  Parmenides'  information. 

The  Way  of  Opinion  thus  contains  physiological  the- 
ories on  the  composition  of  the  human  body,  the  mechanics 
of  thinking,  and  the  formation  of  embryos.  It  also  em- 
braces views  of  the  origin  and  movement  of  the  heavenly 
bodies,  and  these  views  rest  on  a  dualistic  conception  of 
nature,  as  composed  of  fire  and  night.  Finally  there  is  the 
figure  of  Necessity,  which  seems  to  imply  a  new  notion  of 
natural  regularity.  The  basic  features  and  many  details 
of  this  system  appear  to  be  Pythagorean ;  but  certain  other 
elements  in  it,  such  as  the  double  idea  of  regularity  and 
the  psychological  doctrine,  are  probably  not  derived  from 
that  source.  On  the  whole,  The  Way  of  Opinion  is  best 
taken  to  represent  a  compendium  of  contemporary  cos- 
mology, the  most  likely  scientific  explanation  of  nature 
that  Parmenides  could  make. 

C78: 


PARMENIDES 

9.  We  must  now  attempt  to  discover  the  real  relation 
between  this  Way  of  Opinion  and  The  Way  of  Truth. 
Several  times  in  the  course  of  the  poem,  the  statement  is 
made  that  there  is  no  truth  in  the  beliefs  of  mortals,  which 
are  described  in  The  Way  of  Opinion ;  but  the  significance 
of  this  statement  is  lost  if  we  do  not  remember  that  it  is 
not  Parmenides,  but  the  goddess,  who  is  speaking.  The 
goddess  uses  the  phrase  "the  opinions  of  mortals,"  and  the 
goddess  asserts  that  there  is  no  truth  in  them,  for  truth 
is  a  divine  possession.  The  superficial  meaning  of  these 
words  is  not  hard  to  guess ;  there  is  indeed  no  truth  in  The 
Way  of  Opinion  because,  as  we  have  previously  seen, 
truth  is  reasoned  proof ,  and  the  explanations  of  phenomena 
offered  by  cosmology  and  resting  on  the  idea  of  motion 
in  empty  space  cannot  be  "proved"  in  this  sense.  ,And 
these  explanations  are  called  the  opinion  of  mortals,  in 
contradistinction  to  the  goddess'  own  truth,  because  they 
involve  the  notion  of  separate,  changing  things,  which 
are  given  in  the  general  experience  of  mortal  men. 

But  to  accept  these  statements  at  their  face  value  would 
be  possible  only  if  we  entirely  overlooked  the  question 
why  Parmenides  considered  it  worth  while  to  describe  the 
opinions  of  men,  which  were  utterly  false.  To  that  ques- 
tion we  demand  an  answer  before  we  can  be  satisfied  that 
the  author  means  what  he  says.  Now  the  only  direct  infor- 
mation on  this  point  in  the  poem  is  the  statement  of  the 
goddess  that  there  are  only  two  ways  of  investigation,  and 
that  she  will  tell  Parmenides  the  true  way  because  it  is 
right  for  him  to  know  the  truth,  and  the  false  way  in  order 
that  no  other  human  mind  shall  ever  outdo  him.  This  re- 
mark does  not  afford  much  help,  except  that  it  agrees  with 
several  others  in  indicating  that  Parmenides  knew  there 
were  two  possible  ways  of  investigating  the  world,  al- 

r.7»n 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

though  only  one  was  right.  But  what  makes  the  wrong 
way  a  way  at  all  ?  or  how  do  the  various  opinions  of  men 
come  to  be  a  single  method  of  interpreting  the  world*?  It 
is,  we  find,  because  these  opinions  can  be  formed  into  an 
orderly  arrangement  or  system  ( Stct/cocr^oj',  8,  line  60), 
which  may  seem  likely  or  plausible,  /tfhis  system  is  made 
up  of  appearances  (ra  So/cowra),  and  to  gain  the  truth, 
we  must  pass  through  each  of  these  appearances  and  judge 
them  all  together  (1,  lines  31,  32).  When  we  do  that,  we 
find  that  they  are  only  "names,"  which  men  have  invented 
for  their  convenience,  but  which  have  no  corresponding 
reality  (19,  line  3);  for  when  we  raise  the  question  of 
existence  or  reality,  we  see  that  none  of  these  named  things 
has  any  existence  of  its  own  and  the  whole  system  of 
names  collapses  into  the  undifferentiated  unity  of  What-is. 
Thus  although  there  is  no  truth  in  these  opinions  of  men, 
there  is  some  use  in  knowing  them,  because  we  have  to  pass 
through  this  system  on  the  way  to  the  truth  and  the  parts 
of  this  system  of  appearances  must  be  rightly  judged  (1, 
lines  28-30). 

It  should  be  noticed  that  there  is  a  sharp  opposition 
between  Truth  and  Opinion,  which  the  author  takes  pains 
to  make  prominent.  This  opposition  in  itself  is  enough  to 
show  that  Parmenides  had  thought  deeply  on  logical  mat- 
ters; and  when  we  put  it  in  conjunction  with  his  views 
on  the  subject  of  names  and  their  objective  reference,  it  is 
evident  that  he  was  capable  of  dealing  with  very  abstract 
considerations.  But  even  that  is  not  all ;  for  we  have  also 
found  that  he  uses  the  expressions  What-is  (to  iov) ,  What- 
is-not  (to  fir)  iov),  and  What-seems-to-be  (ra  Sokovvtcl), 
and  that  he  identifies  What-seems-to-be  with  What-is-not. 
Furthermore  he  connects  reason  (Xoyo?)  with  What-is; 
and  he  seems  to  refer  eyes,  ears,  and  tongue  (sc.  taste) 

[803 


PARMENIDES 

to  opinion — a  reference  which  is  all  the  more  natural  in 
Greek  on  account  of  the  confusion  of  perception  and  opin- 
ion in  the  verbs  Sokco  and  eot/cej/,  both  of  which  Parmeni- 
des  uses.  There  is,  however,  no  question  of  two  worlds,  one 
sensible,  the  other  intelligible;  for  the  real  world  of  rea- 
son is  still  the  sensible,  corporeal  world.  There  are  not 
two  worlds,  but  rather  two  "Ways"  of  interpreting  one 
and  the  same  world.  Thus  Parmenides,  after  recognizing 
that  appearances  form  a  system  which  can  appeal  to  the 
mind,  could  not  establish  any  relation  between  this  sys- 
tem and  reality;  and  he  ended  by  interpreting  the  appear- 
ances as  equivalent  to  What-is-not,  and  their  system  as  a 
falsehood. 


CHAPTER  VI 

EMPEDOCLES 

1.  Empedocles  was  a  native  of  Acragas,  a  city  on  the 
southern  shore  of  Sicily,  and  he  belonged  therefore,  like 
Parmenides,  to  western  Hellas.  His  date  is  very  uncertain, 
but  he  must  have  died  after  444  b.c.  ;  and  for  philosophical 
purposes  the  important  chronological  point  is  that  his 
philosophy  appears  to  come  after  that  of  Parmenides  and 
to  have  been  framed  in  conscious  reference  to  it.  Accord- 
ing to  good  authority,  Empedocles  was  a  student  of  Par- 
menides, and  it  was  no  doubt  his  master's  example  which 
influenced  him  to  express  his  thoughts  in  verse.  Consider- 
able fragments  of  two  poems  have  been  preserved;  the 
one  poem,  entitled  On  Nature,  contains  philosophical  and 
scientific  matter,  while  the  other,  called  Purifications,  is 
mainly  religious  and  mystical.  This  interest  in  both  sci- 
ence and  mysticism  is  reminiscent  of  Pythagoras;  but 
Empedocles'  interest  was  by  no  means  confined  to  these 
two  fields,  for  he  was  prominent  also  in  the  politics  of  his 
native  city,  and  in  the  development  of  rhetoric  and  of 
medicine.  Therein  lay  part  of  his  value  to  philosophy,  for 
he  widened  its  scope  by  the  introduction  of  new  material. 
2.  Empedocles  was  recognized  as  one  of  the  founders 
of  the  Italian  school  of  medicine,  and  it  was  no  doubt  his 
work  in  medicine  that  gave  him  his  scientific  attitude 
toward  the  details  of  nature.  Before  him  philosophers  had 
considered  mainly  the  grand  processes  and  the  grosser 

C82  ] 


EMPEDOCLES 

parts  of  the  world,  such  as  combustion  and  the  heavenly 
bodies;  but  Empedocles  investigated  also  the  minor  and 
seemingly  unimportant  things.  Moreover,  as  a  general 
rule,  he  tried  to  justify  his  theories  by  pointing  to  facts, 
to  a  far  greater  extent  than  any  of  his  predecessors  had 
done;  and  scattered  through  his  work  there  are  such 
phrases  as  "come  now,  look  at  things  that  bear  witness  to 
my  previous  discourse  ...  see  the  sun  .  .  .  and;  the 
rain"  (21),  or  "This  you  can  see  in  shell-fish  .  .  .  sea- 
snails  .  .  .  turtles"  (76).  He  thus  depended  on  the  evi- 
dence of  his  senses,  and  where  Parmenides  thought  of 
proof  as  logical  demonstration,  Empedocles  thought  of 
it  as  sense  experience.  That  this  method  had  been  con- 
sciously adopted  and  its  contrast  with  that  of  Parmenides 
appreciated  seems  to  be  indicated  by  some  verses  at  the 
beginning  of  the  poem  On  Nature,  where  the  Muse  (rep- 
resented as  the  author  of  the  poem)  condemns  investiga- 
tors who  boastfully  profess  to  discover  the  whole,  and 
instructs  the  writer  to  consider  with  all  his  human  facul- 
ties in  what  way  each  thing  is  clear  (2,  4).  Of  course,  Em- 
pedocles understood  the  thinking  capacity,  and  he  meant 
neither  to  neglect  it  nor  to  give  up  the  attempt  to  dis- 
cover the  meaning  of  nature  as  a  whole ;  his  point  is  rather 
that  the  senses  should  not  be  discarded,  and  that  is  what 
Parmenides  had  done.  The  method  of  Empedocles  was 
thus  scientific  in  depending  upon  detailed  investigation 
and  appealing  to  sense  experience. 

3.  It  is  obvious  that  such  an  attitude  toward  experience 
would  carry  with  it  acceptance  of  the  fact  of  change,  and 
it  was  at  this  point  that  Empedocles  found  his  specific 
problem.  Heraclitus  had  carried  the  notion  of  change  to 
a  point  where  substance  became  impossible,  while  Par- 
menides had  carried  the  notion  of  substance  to  a  point 

C833 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

where  change  became  impossible;  but  taken  together,  their 
philosophies  might  suggest  that  substance  and  change 
could  both  be  kept  if  they  could  be  made  independent  of 
each  other,  and  it  was  along  this  line  of  thought  that 
Empedocles  sought  his  solution. 

4.  With  reference  to  substance,  Empedocles  accepted 
the  contention  of  Parmenides  that  substance  is  uncreated 
and  imperishable,  and  that  there  is  no  empty  space  (11- 
14).  On  the  other  hand,  he  did  not  follow  his  master  in 
holding  that  substance  was  unitary;  there  were,  he  be- 
lieved, four  basic  substances  which  entered  into  the  com- 
position of  the  world :  earth,  air,  fire,  and  water.  Each  of 
these  substances  was  represented  as  always  "alike,"  that 
is,  it  did  not  admit  of  qualitative  change;  and  they  were 
also  "equal,"  that  is,  they  were  quantitatively  equivalent 
to  one  another.  Empedocles  called  them  "roots"  of  all 
things  (6),  an  expression  which  reminds  us  of  the  Pytha- 
gorean oath  (above,  p.  41),  and  which  suggests  that  they 
were  conceived  as  the  ultimate  simple  elements  of  which 
all  things  are  composed.  Inasmuch  as  they  were  distinct 
varieties  of  matter,  which  could  not  be  separated  into 
different  forms,  they  were  true  elements,  and  the  first  to  be 
adequately  conceived  as  such  in  Greek  philosophy. 

Empedocles  does  not  say  why  he  selected  fire,  air, 
water,  and  earth  as  the  ultimate  substances  of  the  world ; 
but  the  School  of  medicine  which  he  helped  to  found 
identified  these  substances  with  "opposites,"  hot,  cold, 
moist,  and  dry,  respectively,  and  probably  Empedocles 
himself  believed  that  the  various  qualities  which  we  ex- 
perience in  things  could  be  analyzed  into  these  four  ulti- 
mate qualities.  On  the  other  hand,  he  also  localized  the 

[84n 


EMPEDOCLES 

elements  in  particular  bodies,  viz.  the  sun,  the  sky,1  the 
sea,  and  the  earth  (22),  and  in  effect  he  thus  identified 
a  particular  ultimate  quality  with  the  material  of  a  par- 
ticular simple  body.  This  conception  shows  that  he  had 
not  advanced  to  the  point  of  forming  a  distinct  notion  of 
quality  at  all — that  was  the  work  of  Socrates  and  Plato. 

Since  the  elements  of  things  were  at  the  same  time 
actually  existent  in  their  pure  form,  there  were,  accord- 
ing to  Empedocles,  two  kinds  of  things :  pure  elements  or 
simple  substances,  and  mixed  derivatives.  To  the  latter 
class  belonged  every  thing  that  was  not  a  pure  element, 
and  specifically  all  mortal  combinations,  such  as  plants  and 
animals.  A  human  body,  for  instance,  was  a  definite  com- 
posite of  earth,  air,  fire,  and  water.  But  such  things  have 
no  substance  of  their  own— they  come  into  being  and  pass 
away,  and  they  can  be  analyzed  into  their  simple  com- 
ponents which  do  not  come  into  being  or  pass  away.  We 
can  name  these  compounds,  just  as  we  name  the  elements; 
but  we  must  not  suppose  that  the  name  of  a  compound 
implies  a  particular  substance,  as  it  does  in  the  case  of  ar 
element  (8). 

5.  A  compound  is  a  temporary  combination  of  differ- 
ent substances  in  a  particular  form;  and  since  the  sub- 
stances of  which  it  is  composed  are  indestructible,  coming 
into  being  and  passing  away  and  all  the  phenomena  of 
growth  must  be  considered  merely  as  changes  of  form.2 
Furthermore  since  Empedocles  held  that  there  was  no 
empty  space,  a  change  of  form  had  to  be  explained  as  a 
rearrangement  of  substances,  so  that  when  one  substance 

1  Empedocles  had  discovered  the  corporeal  nature  of  air,  cf.  frag.  100; 
and  it  could  no  longer  be  thought  of  as  a  void  between  the  parts  of  the 
world. 

2  elSos  and  lS4a  ,  22,  7  ;  35,  17 ;  71,  3 ;  1 15,  7 ;  125.  These  are  the  words  used 
by  Plato  for  Forms  or  ideas. 

* 

c  85  a 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

left  a  place,  that  place  was  immediately  filled  by  another 
substance.  Change  was  in  fact  the  mixture  and  separation 
of  four  indestructible  elements;  and  by  this  theory  Em- 
pedocles  was  enabled  to  maintain  the  reality  of  change, 
and  yet  keep  the  Parmenidean  notion  of  substance. 

In  regard  to  the  mechanics  of  mixture  and  separation, 
the  fragments  are  unsatisfactory.  In  one  of  them  (23), 
mixture  is  explained  by  the  metaphor  of  a  painter 
harmoniously  combining  pigments  of  different  colors  in 
various  amounts;  and  mixture  is  thus  a  blend  (Kpacnv, 
22,  4),  although  all  the  scattered  parts  of  an  element  are 
said  to  be  closely  joined  together,  and  ex  hypothesi  all 
parts  must  keep  the  characteristic  quality.  In  another 
fragment  (26),  the  elements  are  said  to  "disappear  into 
one  another"  and  to  "run  through  one  another,"3  and 
Aristotle  tells  us  that  Empedocles  explained  mixture  in 
general  by  "the  symmetry  of  pores."  This  idea  of  pores 
was  no  doubt  an  analogy  from  the  living  body,  for  the 
author  in  the  course  of  his  physiological  work  had  adopted 
the  view  that  "the  outer  surface  of  the  skin  is  perforated 
clear  through  with  closely  packed  pores"  (100;  cf.  84). 
Whether  Empedocles  himself  assumed  pores  for  the  ele- 
ments or  only  for  compounds  we  do  not  know.  Aristotle 
points  out  the  significance  of  this  concept  of  pores;  for, 
when  taken  in  conjunction  with  the  doctrine  of  mixture 
and  separation,  it  suggest  atomism,  and  yet  if  the  pores 
are  empty,  there  must  be  a  void,  and  if  full,  they  are 
useless.  But  such  points  were  beyond  the  range  of  Em- 
pedocles' thought,  and  we  must  not  try  to  elaborate  his 
statement  that  the  elements  somehow  run  through  one 
another. 

6.  Empedocles  now  had  to  explain  what  made  the  ele- 

3  frag.  26;  cf.  frag.  17,  34.  Arist.,  De  Gen.  et  Corr.,  I,  8.  324  b  34. 

C86H 


EMPEDOCLES 

merits  act  in  this  way.  Since  they  were  substances  in  the 
full  Parmenidean  sense,  it  was  assumed  that  they  had  no 
power  in  themselves  of  mixing;  and  once  a  combination 
was  formed,  there  was  no  power  in  it  to  separate  the  ele- 
ments and  bring  about  dissolution.  Mixture  and  separa- 
tion therefore  had  to  be  accounted  for  by  things  other 
than  the  elements  which  were  mixed  and  separated.  Here 
again  Empedocles  was  influenced  by  his  biological  inter- 
ests, and  he  posited  two  things  which  he  called  Love  and 
Strife,  cosmological  fluids,  as  it  were,  whose  function 
was  to  unite  and  dissolve.  He  specifically  says  that  the 
cosmic  Love  is  the  same  thing  that  is  known  as  being 
implanted  in  the  frames  of  mortals  and  that  makes  them 
think  loving  thoughts  and  do  friendly  deeds  (17,  lines 
19,  20;  cf.  frag.  20).  In  other  words,  Love  unites  differ- 
ent elements  to  form  a  mortal  combination,  and  Strife 
disintegrates  such  a  combination  so  that  the  elements  are 
separated  from  one  another.  Love  is  therefore  not  the 
attraction  of  like  for  like,  but  an  outside  force  that  brings 
unlike  things  together. 

The  part  which  the  four  elements  played  in  Empedo- 
cles' system  was  that  out  of  which  mortal  things  were 
made,  while  Love  and  Strife  were  that  by  which  mortal 
things  were  made.  The  distinction  was  undoubtedly  the 
result  of  the  separation  of  change  and  substance  suggested 
by  Heraclitus  and  Parmenides;  and  it  shows  that  the 
author  was  working  in  the  direction  of  a  concept  of  force. 
He  did  not  reach  this  concept  for  two  reasons.  In  the  first 
place,  his  thought  was  limited  to  the  category  of  the  cor- 
poreal, and  he  therefore  had  to  describe  Love  and  Strife 
in  the  same  corporeal  terms  which  he  used  for  the  ele- 
ments. Strife  was  thus  "equal  in  weight,"  and  Love  "equal 
in  length  and  breadth,"  to  the  elements.  From  this  point 

C87 3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

of  view  there  appear  to  be  six  bodies.4  In  the  second  place, 
the  elements  themselves  appear  to  be  endowed  with  cer- 
tain active  capacities.  Thus  the  elements  are  said  to  come 
together  "voluntarily,"  and  a  part  of  an  element  is  rep- 
resented as  "desirous  of  returning  to  its  like."5  From  this 
point  of  view  there  appear  to  be  six  forces.  Empedocles 
could  no  more  conceive  of  a  totally  inactive  thing  than  he 
could  of  a  totally  incorporeal  thing.  And  yet  it  would 
be  a  mistake  not  to  realize  that  there  was  a  distinction 
between  the  four  elements  on  the  one  hand,  and  Love  and 
Strife  on  the  other,  and  that  the  invention  of  Love 
and  Strife  as  cosmic  figures  marked  an  advance  in  phi- 
losophy. The  only  reason  for  having  Love  ancLJitiife 
at  all  was  to  account  for  mixture  and_sepajatiop, ,_that 
is,  to  cause  change;  and  their  corporeality  was  entirely 
secondaryTanoTnecessarv  onlyltQ-f  xpl  aip  XW^T existence.. 
1'heymus  appeared  like  a  different  kind  of  thing  from 
the  ordinary  objects  of  sensible  experience,  a  kind  of 
thing,  as  Empedocles  suggests,  that  must  be  seen  with  the 
mind  rather  than  with  the  eyes  (frag.  17,  lines  21,  25). 

7.  Since  Love  and  Strife  were  both  active,  there  had 
to  be  some  law  which  governed  their  interrelation;  but 
on  this  subject  the  author  is  obscure,  except  for  the  point 
that  they  alternately  predominated.  Apparently  he  con- 
ceived of  the  ultimate  operation  of  the  world  in  both  a 
mechanical  and  a  mystical  fashion.  Mechanically  the 
world  was  a  vortex  or  whirl  (35,  4),  and  in  form  it  was  a 
sphere  (as  Parmenides  had  argued).  But  connected  in 
some  fashion  with  the  sphere  there  was  a  circle,  which 
went  round ;  and  the  sphere  itself  is  described  as  circular. 
We  cannot  hope  to  weave  these  details  into  a  fabric  of 

4  cf.  Arist.,  Met.  I,  10.  1075  b  3 ;  Theo.,  Pkys.  Opin.,  frag.  3  (Dox.,  p.  477). 
50iKt)ixa,  35,  6;  04\ov,  62,  6;  Trodiovra,  no,  9. 

C  88  3 


EMPEDOCLES 

consistent  theory,  but  it  looks  as  if  the  author  had  con- 
fused vortical  movement  in  a  plane  (like  an  eddy  of 
water)  with  the  rotary  movement  of  a  sphere,  in  which 
case  the  circle  might  have  been  a  kind  of  celestial  equator. 
Be  that  as  it  may,  each  of  the  four  elements  had  its  place 
in  the  circle  and  predominated  as  the  circle  came  round, 
although  the  author  does  not  say  what  the  predominance 
of  an  element  meant.  Also  as  the  alternate  time  comes 
round,  Love  and  Strife  displace  each  other  in  the  world, 
the  one  entering  as  the  other  leaves.  The  alternate  time  is 
in  turn  fixed  by  a  "broad  oath,"  and  here  we  are  frankly 
in  the  realm  of  mysticism.  It  is  of  course  possible  that 
Empedocles  thought  of  this  broad  oath  in  material  terms 
and  identified  it  with  the  boundary  between  Love  and 
Strife  or  some  other  cosmic  arrangement;  but  there  is  no 
indication  of  such  a  meaning  in  the  fragments,  and  in  the 
Purifications  broad  oaths  are  connected  with  Necessity. 
This  is  the  same  half-cosmological,  half -mystical  figure 
that  we  found  in  the  poem  of  Empedocles'  master,  Par- 
menides  (above,  p.  77);  and  it  represents  the  notion  of 
ultimate  cosmic  regularity.  In  the  final  analysis,  therefore, 
Necessity  regulates  the  alternation  of  Love  and  Strife 
in  effecting  the  mixture  and  separation  of  the  four  ele- 
ments by  the  mechanism  of  a  vortical  motion.6 

The  alternation  of  Love  and  Strife  produced  by  the 

6  The  above  interpretation  is  based  on  the  following  references :  "as 
the  time  comes  round"  and  "in  turn,"  17,  29;  "as  the  circle  comes  round." 
26,  1  ;  "the  circle"  and  "circular  sphere,"  26,  12;  27,  4;  28,  2 ;  35,  10;  "the 
broad  oath,"  30,  2;  "Necessity,"  115  and  116.  Empedocles  also  assumed 
Chance  in  his  cosmology ;  cf .  <rw4Kvpae,  53  and  59,  t6xv*,  103.  There  need 
be  no  difficulty  about  the  former,  for  it  does  not  specify  a  distinct  cause 
called  chance,  but  only  avoids  specifying  any  cause.  What  rixn  is  Empedo- 
cles does  not  say,  but  it  may  be  the  same  as  Necessity.  Aristotle's  criticism 
of  Empedocles  for  attributing  too  much  to  chance  (Pkys.,  II,  8,  198  b  29) 
does  not  imply  that  Empedocles  actually  assumed  a  distinct  chance,  but 
only  that  he  did  not  take  account  of  final  causes. 

C893 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

vortex  a  kind  of  cosmic  evolution,  only  the  main  features 
of  which  we  need  notice.  ( l )  The  world  started  as  a  sphere 
with  Love  diffused  and  Strife  on  the  outside  and  the  ele- 
ments perfectly  mixed.  (2)  As  Strife  entered,  the  different 
portions  of  each  element  began  to  come  together  out  of  the 
mixture,  first  air,  then  fire,  earth,  and  water,  in  that 
order.7  (3)  This  process  was  completed  with  the  full  pre- 
ponderance of  Strife,  all  of  each  element  united,  and  Love 
expelled.  (4)  Finally,  there  was  the  reverse  process  when 
Love  began  to  enter  the  world  and  Strife  to  pass  out,  until 
the  original  condition  was  reached.  The  present  condition 
of  the  world  would  be  possible  only  in  the  second  and 
fourth  periods,  and  Professor  Burnet  has  shown  that  it 
was  probably  in  the  second.8  Coincident  with  this  cosmic 
evolution,  there  was  also  an  evolution  of  living  forms, 
which  was  double  in  that  it  occurred  both  in  the  second 
and  the  fourth  periods.  In  the  fourth  period,  the  parts  of 
animals  were  produced  separately — heads  without  necks, 
arms  without  shoulders  (57),  and  so  forth;  and  then  these 
separate  limbs  were  united  in  all  sorts  of  combinations, 
only  the  fittest  of  which  survived  (59-61).  In  the  second 
period,  the  earth  sent  forth  portions  of  itself  mixed  with 
water  and  fire,  and  having  only  the  general  outlines  of 
animal  forms;  these  were  afterward  differentiated  into 
various  limbs,  sexes,  and  species  (62).  While  Empedo- 
cles  certainly  had  the  notion  of  an  evolution  of  organisms 
and  even  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  it  is  clear  that  he 
had  no  proper  idea  of  the  part  played  in  this  process  by 
reproduction  and  heredity,  or  the  development  of  species. 
And  in  the  end  the  whole  process  was  mechanically  gov- 
erned by  Love  and  Strife. 

7  cf .  Aetius  II,  6,  3  Dox.,  p.  334;  and  Ps.-Plut.,  Strom.,  frag.   10  Dox., 
p.  582. 

8  Burnet,  pp.  234  ff.  Zeller,  pp.  785  ff.,  held  to  the  fourth  period. 

[90] 


EMPEDOCLES 

8.  Empedocles  spoke  of  Love  as  divine  (86)  and  of 
the  sphere  as  god  (31).  Now  the  form  of  his  expression 
(27)  suggests  that  he  thought  of  the  sphere  as  produced 
by  Love  alone,  and  that  is  the  interpretation  of  Simpli- 
cius,  who  probably  represents  Theophrastus,  who  must 
have  had  the  poem  of  Empedocles  before  him.9  In  other 
words,  the  sphere  is  the  result  of  Love's  binding  together 
the  four  elements ;  and  it  was  thus  easy  for  the  author  to 
think  of  Love  and  the  sphere  as  the  same  thing.  Further- 
more there  are  two  fragments,  one  from  the  poem  On 
Nature,  the  other  from  the  religious  poem  called  Purifica- 
tions, in  both  of  which  the  author  attacks  anthropo- 
morphism, as  follows: 

Two  branches  do  not  sprout  There  is  no  body  furnished  with 
from  a  back,  there  are  no  feet,  human  head,  two  branches  do 
no  swift  knees,  no  genital  parts ;  not  sprout  from  a  back,  there 
but  it  is  a  sphere  and  equal  to  are  no  feet,  no  swift  knees,  no 
itself  on  every  side.  (frag.  29)       hairy  parts;  but  there  is  only  a 

sacred  and  ineffable  mind  flash- 
ing through  all  the  world  with 
swift  thoughts,  (frag.  134) 

It  is  obvious  that  the  first  parts  of  both  fragments  refer  to 
the  same  thing,  and  it  is  natural  to  suppose  that  the  sec- 
ond parts  do  the  same.  In  that  case  the  sphere  (Love) 
would  be  also  cosmic  mind.  This  identification  is  made 
more  intelligible,  when  we  find  that  Empedocles  con- 
nected human  thought  with  even  mixture  of  the  elements 
in  the  region  of  the  heart,  for  the  sphere  is  simply  the  con- 
dition of  the  world  where  the  elements  are  completely 
mixed  by  Love.  Moreover,  Empedocles  represents  him- 
self as  suffering  punishment  because  he  had  put  his  trust 
in  raging  Strife  (115),  and  other  passages  indicate  that 

9  Simp.,  Pkys.,  1124,  1 ;  cf.  De  Coelo,  293,  18  DFV,  p.  161,  52,  and  Philop., 
De  Gen.  et  Corr.,  19,  3  Vitelli  DFV,  p.  160,  41. 

C91  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

his  sin  lay  in  eating  flesh — the  killing  of  animals  puts  into 
operation  the  law  of  Strife.  Contrasted  with  this  condi- 
tion of  Strife,  there  is  Love,  who  makes  men  "think  lov- 
ing thoughts  and  do  friendly  deeds"  (17).  It  is  then  not 
difficult  to  connect  Love  with  good,  and  Strife  with  evil, 
and  to  appreciate  the  propriety  of  worshipping  Love. 
Love  then  is  god,  the  cosmological  force  which  streams 
through  the  elements  and  binds  them  together  into  the 
sphere,  the  cosmic  intelligence  which  penetrates  the  whole 
world  with  its  thoughts,  and  the  deity  to  whom  mortals 
owe  their  existence  and  whom  they  ought  to  worship. 

9.  On  human  life  and  activity  also  Empedocles  had 
both  scientific  and  mystical  doctrines.  He  believed  that 
perception  resulted  from  objects  fitting  into  the  pores  of 
the  sense  organs,  and  that  it  took  place  when  an  element 
in  the  organ  met  the  same  element  in  the  object.  He  made 
no  real  distinction  between  perception  and  thought;  the 
latter  was  a  kind  of  finer  sensibility  and  was  localized 
chiefly  in  the  blood  around  the  heart,  where  the  elements 
were  most  evenly  mixed.  But  he  believed  that  other  parts 
of  the  body  and  indeed  all  things  were  endowed  with 
thought,  an  easy  corollary  of  the  doctrine  that  thought 
is  Love,  which  is  present  in  all  mortal  combinations.  Since 
thought,  like  perception,  was  the  meeting  of  likes,  Empedo- 
cles apparently  drew  the  conclusion  that  it  was  possible 
to  have  any  good  thing  by  thinking  about  it  sufficiently, 
for  it  would  then  "grow  into  the  heart."  It  was  accord- 
ingly within  the  power  of  a  thoughtful  man  to  have  all 
happiness,  to  learn  drugs  that  ward  off  evil  and  old  age, 
to  govern  the  winds,  and  to  bring  back  the  dead  (110, 
111).  Moreover,  Empedocles  represents  himself  as  a 
fallen  god,  according  to  the  doctrine  of  transmigration. 
If  a  demon  or  divinity  pollutes  his  hands  with  blood  or 

C92D 


EMPEDOCLES 

forswears  himself,  he  is  forced  out  of  his  abode  with  the 
blessed  for  thirty  thousand  seasons  and  is  tossed  from  one 
element  to  another  (115).  On  the  other  hand,  those  who 
lead  the  life  of  wisdom  reappear  as  prophets,  poets,  physi- 
cians, and  princes,  and  thereafter  become  gods  (146). 
What  the  special  cosmological  composition  of  these  gods 
is  Empedocles  did  not  say;  but  that  his  cosmology  made 
room  for  gods  is  proved  by  a  reference  in  the  poem  On 
Nature  (21),  where  they  are  said  to  be  formed  from  the 
elements,  like  all  other  things.  The  foregoing  doctrines 
leave  no  room  for  doubt  that  Empedocles,  from  both  the 
scientific  and  the  religious  standpoints,  put  a  high  value 
on  wisdom;  it  was  an  attribute  of  god  (enough  to  make  it 
a  human  ideal),  and  it  brought  great  practical  benefits  to 
a  human  possessor.  Hence  "happy  is  he  who  has  gained 
the  wealth  of  divine  wisdom;  wretched  is  he  who  has  a 
dim  opinion  of  gods"  ( 132) .  That  is  the  ethics  of  Empedo- 
cles in  a  nutshell. 

10.  The  philosophy  of  Empedocles  cannot  be  simply 
characterized,  because  it  was  many-sided.  That  it  had  a 
truly  scientific  aspect  we  noted  at  the  beginning;  but  we 
have  also  seen  a  strong  religious  and  mystical  strain  in  it. 
A  member  of  the  Coan  medical  school,  founded  by  Hip- 
pocrates shortly  after  Empedocles'  death,  protested 
against  the  magical  and  unscientific  practices  of  the  School 
of  Empedocles;10  and  we  must  admit  the  justice  of  this 
criticism,  while  at  the  same  time  maintaining  the  scien- 
tific quality  of  Empedocles'  use  of  observation  in  phi- 
losophy. Some  modern  historians  of  philosophy  have  felt 
it  impossible  to  reconcile  the  religious  and  the  scientific 
doctrines,  and  have  accordingly  adopted  the  view  that 
there  was  a  gulf  between  them  in  the  mind  of  the  author, 

10  Hippocrates  trepl  lepfjs   v6crov,  1. 

I  93  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

the  one  being  described  in  the  poem  On  Nature^  the  other 
in  the  Purifications.  But  such  a  view  is  not  borne  out  by 
a  careful  interpretation  of  the  language  of  the  poems.  In 
the  conception  of  the  final  regularity  of  the  world,  of 
divinity,  and  of  human  life,  there  is  both  a  cosmological 
(scientific)  and  a  religious  (mystical)  side;  but  the  two 
sides  are  presented  within  the  compass  of  the  one  poem 
On  Nature.  The  truth  would  seem  to  be  that  Empedocles 
made  no  conscious  distinction  between  religion  and  science 
— they  are  modern  categories — and  he  passed  insensibly 
from  what  we  call  a  scientific  to  what  we  call  a  mystical 
interpretation.  There  is  no  greater  inconsistency  between 
his  science  and  his  religion,  than  there  is  between  different 
parts  of  his  science ;  and  we  must  remember  that  inconsis- 
tency is  judged  on  the  basis  of  our  present  knowledge. 


CHAPTER  VII 

ANAXAGORAS 

l.  Anaxagoras  was  a  native  of  Clazomenae  in  Asia 
Minor,  and  his  thought  plainly  shows  the  impress  of  the 
Ionian  tradition  and  especially  the  influence  of  Anaxi- 
menes.  But  he  left  his  home  and  came  to  Athens,  where  he 
is  said  to  have  remained  for  thirty  years.  This  would  be 
in  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century,  before  the  Pelopon- 
nesian  War,  but  the  dates  cannot  be  established  with  any 
certainty.  He  was  the  first  philosopher  to  take  up  his 
residence  in  Athens,  which  was  then  making  itself,  under 
the  leadership  of  Pericles,  the  most  prominent  city  in 
Greece;  and  the  statesman  became  a  pupil  of  the  phi- 
losopher, though  without  doubt  it  was  not  the  cosmology 
but  the  practical  application  of  Anaxagoras'  doctrine  of 
Mind  to  politics  and  rhetoric  that  interested  Pericles. 
Euripides  also  appears  to  have  been  influenced  by  Anaxa- 
goras, though  what  their  personal  relations  were  is  not 
known.  A  charge  of  impiety  or  irreligion  was  lodged 
against  Anaxagoras,  which  means  that  some  of  his  doc- 
trines had  offended  supporters  of  the  accepted  religion; 
but  Pericles  in  some  way  got  him  released,  and  he  went 
to  Lampsacus,  where  he  founded  a  school.  He  developed 
his  philosophical  theory  in  a  prose  treatise,  considerable 
fragments  of  which  have  been  preserved. 

2.  The  general  problem  of  Anaxagoras  was  much  the 
same  as  that  of  Empedocles,  viz.  to  reconcile  the  Parmeni- 

l9Sl 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

dean  conclusion  that  substance  is  an  unchangeable  con- 
tinuum with  the  plain  evidence  of  a  changing  manifold, 
presented  by  the  senses  and  insisted  upon  by  Heraclitus. 
And  from  the  most  abstract  point  of  view,  he  approached 
the  problem  by  the  same  way  that  Empedocles  had  taken : 

( 1 )  denying  the  possibility  of  coming  into  being  and  pass- 
ing away,  but  positing  mixture  and  separation  (change)  ; 

(2)  assuming  a  distinct  agent  of  mixture  and  separation 
(cause  of  change).  On  the  other  hand,  he  was  an  original 
thinker  of  no  mean  attainments,  and  his  originality  ap- 
pears in  (1)  his  doctrine  of  infinite  divisibility;  and  (2) 
his  conception  of  the  cause  of  change  as  Mind. 

3.  Empedocles  had  suggested  that  if  you  analyzed 
things,  you  would  come  in  the  end  to  four  ultimate  things 
which  were  qualitatively  simple  and  separate  from  one 
another — in  other  words,  the  process  of  analysis  cannot 
go  on  forever,  but  must  stop  when  it  reaches  an  ultimate 
element.  But  Anaxagoras  might  have  pointed  out  that  an 
element  as  a  whole  is,  by  Empedocles'  own  theory,  split 
up  into  parts  (frag.  22,  1),  which  appear  in  different 
mortal  combinations;  and  if  the  whole  is  thus  divisible, 
there  is  no  reason  why  a  part  should  not  be  divisible.  Em- 
pedocles had  uncritically  connected  quantitative  division 
with  qualitative  complexity,  and  assumed  that,  while  by 
division  you  could  arrive  at  the  simple,  yet  the  simple 
put  a  stop  to  further  division.  Anaxagoras  on  the  contrary 
held  that  there  was  no  natural  limit  to  division — you 
can  divide  anything  infinitely.  "There  is  no  least  of  what 
is  small,  but  there  is  always  a  smaller;  for  it  is  impossible 
that  what  is  should  cease  to  be  by  being  cut."1  The  utmost 
that  can  be  said,  therefore,  is  that  you  can  take  anything 

if  rag.  3,  DFV,  p.  314,  reading  rony  with  Zeller  and  Burnet  for  Diels' 

C96H 


ANAXAGORAS 

you  please,  divide  it  up  into  as  small  portions  as  you 
please,  and  regard  these  portions  as  the  "seeds"  or  ele- 
mental components  of  the  thing.  The  seeds  will  be  infinite 
in  number  and  smallness,  for  they  are  theoretical,  not 
natural  entities,  and  can  be  defined  only  by  the  point  at 
which  you  choose  to  stop  in  the  process  of  division,  which 
may  be  infinite.  The  world  is  thus  a  continuum,  as  Par- 
menides  had  held;  and  a  continuum  cannot  be  put  to- 
gether out  of  discrete  elements,2  as  Empedocles  had  tried 
to  do.  Anaxagoras  accordingly  says  "the  things  that  are 
in  one  world  are  not  separated  or  cut  off  from  one  another 
with  a  hatchet"  (frag.  8)  ;  and  that  must  mean  that  there 
are  no  natural  elements  of  the  world  or  that  there  are  theo- 
retically an  infinite  number  of  them. 

4.  It  would  follow  from  the  foregoing  that  there  are 
no  simple  components  of  things;  but  Anaxagoras  rein- 
forced the  point  by  arguing  that  it  would  be  impossible 
for  a  complex  thing  of  certain  qualities  to  be  compounded 
out  of  simple  things  with  other  qualities.  He  is  reported 
to  have  asked  how  hair  could  come  from  what  is  not  hair, 
or  flesh  from  what  is  not  flesh  (frag.  10),  meaning  that 
you  could  divide  hair  ad  infinitum,  and  the  resultant 
portions  would  still  be  hair.  This  view  might  suggest 
that  every  species  of  thing  had  a  separate  and  distinct  sub- 
stance; but  such  a  conclusion  would  be  inconsistent  with 
the  postulate  of  continuity  and  would  also  fail  to  account 
for  the  phenomena  of  growth,  for  the  food  we  eat  and  the 
water  we  drink  somehow  become  flesh  and  hair.  Hence 
Anaxagoras  adopted  the  theory  that  there  is  "a  portion 
of  everything  in  everything"  (frag.  11),  that  is,  every- 
thing contains  all  possible  qualities. 

2  cf .  H.  Weyl,  "Die  heutige  Erkenntnislage  in  der  Mathematik"  (Von 
Anaxagoras  bis  Dedekind),  Symposion  I,  l. 

IT  97  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

5.  How  then  are  we  able  to  distinguish  one  thing  from 
another,  or  account  for  the  apparent  qualitative  differ- 
ences between  things'?  To  this  question  Anaxagoras  pro- 
posed two  answers,  one  cosmological,  and  one  psycholog- 
ical. The  general  features  of  his  cosmology  are  as 
follows.  The  world  started  with  "all  things  together" 
(frag.  1),  an  infinite,  undifferentiated  mass,  like  the  per- 
fectly mixed  sphere  of  Empedocles.  But  a  revolution  or 
rotatory  movement  started  in  a  part  of  this  mass  and  in- 
creased in  area;  and  the  effect  of  this  motion  was  to 
separate  out  opposite  qualities — the  rare  from  the  dense, 
the  warm  from  the  cold,  the  light  from  the  dark,  the  dry 
from  the  moist  (frag.  12).  "The  dense  and  the  moist  and 
the  cold  and  the  dark  came  together  where  the  earth  is 
now,  while  the  rare  and  the  warm  and  the  dry  went  out 
to  the  edge  of  the  ether"  (frag.  15),  so  that  the  world  pre- 
sented the  appearance  of  air  (dense,  moist,  cold,  dark)  and 
of  ether  or  fire  (rare,  dry,  warm,  light).  As  the  revolution 
extended,  it  produced  mixture  and  separation  of  the  fun- 
damental opposites,  which  eventually  resulted  in  the 
present  appearance  of  the  world,  and  which  is  now  called 
change.  But  this  account  must  be  interpreted  in  the  light 
of  the  general  doctrine  of  continuity,  and  when  the  author 
says  that  the  opposites  were  separated  off,  he  does  not 
mean  absolutely  separated,  for  he  distinctly  says  in  an- 
other place  that  "nothing  is  absolutely  separated  or  dis- 
tinguished from  anything  else"  (frag.  12,  line  8;  cf.  frags. 
6  and  8).  Even  the  fundamental  opposites  contain 
portions  of  their  opposites,  so  that  the  dense,  for  example, 
is  only  mostly  dense,  for  it  is  also  partly  rare.  Hence  each 
thing  has  all  the  qualities,  but  more  of  some  than  of  others ; 
and  it  may  be  distinguished  by  those  qualities  of  which 
it  has  most. 

C983 


ANAXAGORAS 

The  psychological  counterpart  of  this  physical  doctrine 
is  the  theory  that  "from  the  weakness  of  our  senses  we  are 
not  able  to  judge  the  truth"  (frag.  21).  The  truth  is  ob- 
viously that  each  thing  contains  portions  of  all  the  quali- 
ties; but  our  senses  discern  only  the  predominant  ones,  of 
which  there  is  most.  Thus  snow,  for  instance,  has  black  in 
it;  but  there  is  more  white  than  black,  and  we  perceive 
only  the  white.  Qualitative  difference  is  therefore  partly 
a  cosmological  fact  resulting  from  the  separation  of  oppo- 
sites,  and  partly  a  psychological  illusion  of  the  senses, 
which  has  to  be  corrected  by  the  mind. 

6.  It  seems  clear  that  in  these  doctrines  Anaxagoras 
had  got  hold  of  two  ideas,  things  and  seeds,  which  were 
destined  to  prove  of  extraordinary  fertility  but  which 
resisted  his  own  powers  of  analysis.  ( 1 )  When  he  says 
that  "in  everything  there  is  a  portion  of  everything,"  the 
second  "everything"  means,  as  he  indicates  in  other  pas- 
sages, the  hot  and  the  cold  and  the  other  traditional  oppo- 
sites,  i.e.  what  we  call  qualities.  Now  he  held  that  while 
the  ordinary  objective  things  of  sense  experience  resulted 
from  a  cosmological  process  of  separation  and  mixture, 
and  were  therefore  ephemeral,  the  "opposite"  things,  such 
as  hot  and  cold,  were  original  attributes  of  the  world  and 
were  eternal — all  that  happened  to  them  was  to  be  mixed 
and  separated,  and  obviously  they  had  to  exist  before 
this  could  be  done  to  them.  Anaxagoras  thus  suggested 
that  there  were  two  different  kinds  of  thing  (physical  ob- 
jects and  qualities),  but  they  both  remained  things  in  his 
thought.  And  this  way  of  speaking  gave  rise  to  a  difficulty 
in  his  system;  for  if  the  opposites  were  physical  things, 
they  must  be  separate  from  one  another  and  then  the 
world  was  made  up  of  discrete  parts,  and  if  they  were  not 
physical  things,  how  could  they  be  separated  and  mixed? 

C99l 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

What  Anaxagoras  really  did  was  to  indicate  that  the  old 
category  of  "thing"  needed  to  be  revised  and  supple- 
mented by  a  new  category  of  quality,  and  he  made  this 
need  more  manifest  by  talking  about  things  in  this  ab- 
stract way  for  the  first  time.3  The  erection  of  a  new  cate- 
gory of  quality  (ttoiot^s)  and  the  assumption  of  qualities 
as  ultimate  characters  of  the  world  was  made  by  Socrates 
and  Plato.  (2)  Anaxagoras'  hesitation  on  the  subject  of 
things  is  matched  by  his  difficulty  with  the  notion  of 
seeds.  It  is  hard  to  see  how  some  of  the  world  could  have 
"more"  of  hot  than  of  cold  in  it,  unless  it  were  composed 
of  elements  which  originally  had  that  character.  In  other 
words,  the  first  separating  off  implies  natural  elements; 
and  in  this  train  of  thought,  the  author  speaks  as  if  the 
seeds  had  different  qualities  and  formed  the  substance  for 
mixing  and  separating  (frag.  4,  lines  2  and  17).  Yet  when 
he  says,  "since  it  is  impossible  that  there  should  be  a  least 
thing,  it  could  not  be  separated  nor  could  it  come  into  ex- 
istence by  itself"  (frag.  6,  lines  3-5),  he  leaves  no  room 
for  any  infinitesimal  elements.  What,  then,  were  the  seeds, 
and  how  were  they  related  to  the  qualities'?  The  distinc- 
tion of  theoretical  divisibility  from  natural  divisions, 'and 
the  assumption  of  natural  atoms  which  had  different  quali- 
ties, was  made  by  Leucippus  and  Democritus.  Thus  in 
these  two  concepts  of  things  and  of  seeds  Anaxagoras 
found  material  which  later  became  of  high  value  to  phi- 
losophy, but  which  he  himself  was  unable  to  manipulate 
successfully. 

7.  Since  Anaxagoras  accepted  the  Parmenidean  conclu- 
sion that  corporeal  substance  cannot  move  itself,  he  re- 
quired an  outside  agent  to  produce  change;  and  for  this 

3  The  Greek  word  xPWa,  which  he  employed,  ordinarily  meant  property 
or  wealth. 


ANAXAGORAS 

purpose  he  posited  a  cosmic  Nous  or  Mind.  This  is  de- 
scribed as  infinite,  unmixed,  all  alike,  the  thinnest  and 
purest  of  all  things  (frag.  12),  and  these  epithets  certainly 
suggest  a  corporeal  nature.  On  the  other  hand,  Nous 
is  absolutely  distinct  from  everything  else — the  only 
"thing"  that  is  altogether  separate  and  outside  the  area 
of  infinite  divisibility;  and  its  essence  is  obviously  not  in 
these  static  qualities  but  rather  in  its  power.  It  has  power 
over  itself  and  over  the  revolution,  which  it  started,  in  fact, 
over  all  things.  Hence,  while  it  is  true  that  Anaxagoras 
did  not  posit  an  incorporeal  Mind,  it  is  also  true  and  much 
more  significant  that  he  did  assume  a  source  of  power, 
which  was  entirely  different  from  all  else  in  the  world, 
and  which  alone  was  god.  The  Love  and  Strife  of  Em* 
pedocles  were  like  "streams"  or  fluids  which  penetrated 
the  mixture  of  corporeal  elements,  and  it  was  only  when 
they  were  "in"  the  mixture  that  they  governed  it.  But  the 
Nous  of  Anaxagoras  was  "alone  by  itself,"  and  the  author 
is  careful  to  state  that  if  it  were  mixed  with  other  things, 
these  latter  would  hinder  the  exercise  of  its  power.  Thus 
he  definitely  joins  the  attribute  of  power  with  the  charac- 
teristic of  being  apart  from  things,  and  such  a  combina- 
tion is  certainly  very  close  to  the  concept  of  incorporeal 
cause  of  motion. 

Since  things,  in  the  full  sense  of  physical  objects,  have 
no  power,  the  motion  that  appears  in  them  is  wholly  de- 
rived from  Nous;  and  that  means  that  in  the  beginning 
Nous  imparted  motion  to  the  world.  Anaxagoras  does  not 
say  that  the  physical  world  was  created  by  Nous — he 
accepted  the  Parmenidean  doctrine  that  nothing  could 
be  created — and  his  system  therefore  starts  with  the 
world-mixture  and  Nous,  just  as  Aristotle  started  with 
matter  and  god.  The  activity  of  Nous  embraced  three 

r.  101 3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

aspects:  (1)  it  started  the  rotatory  movement;  (2)   it 
arranged  what  was  to  be;  and  (3)  it  knows  all  things. 

(1)  It  was  the  rotatory  movement  that  produced  the 
separation  of  the  opposites  out  of  the  original  mixture  and 
from  one  another  and  thus  made  possible  further  mixture 
and  separation.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  all  change  is  to  be 
explained  as  the  result  of  the  original  revolution  and  that 
Nous  does  not  interfere  with  the  course  of  this  revolution, 
once  it  has  been  started.  It  would  be  possible  to  cut  off 
Nous  from  the  apex  of  the  system  and  have  left  a  purely 
mechanistic  explanation  of  the  world. 

(2)  Besides  starting  the  revolution,  Nous  arranged  or 
"set  in  order  all  things  that  were  to  be,  and  that  were 
but  are  not  now,  and  that  are"  (frag.  12);  that  is, 
Nous  designed  or  foreordained  the  subsequent  mechanical 
arrangements  of  things  in  the  world.  The  inference  is  that 
the  revolution  itself  was  an  arrangement  designed  and 
actually  initiated  by  Nous  in  order  to  carry  out  other 
arrangements.  This  suggestion  of  purposive  activity  on 
the  part  of  the  principle  was  new  in  Greek  philosophy, 
and  with  it  we  must  put  the  absence  of  Necessity  and 
Chance,  which  had  been  introduced  by  the  "Western- 
ers," Parmenides  and  Empedocles.  In  the  philosophy  of 
Anaxagoras,  the  world  appears  as  a  series  of  mechanical 
operations  designed  and  actuated  by  a  free  and  intelligent 
cause ;  and  this  ancient  Greek  thinker  is  thus  the  prototype 
of  those  who  believe  that  nature  is  regular  and  mechanical 
as  the  result  of  God's  will. 

(3)  Finally,  Nous  has  knowledge  of  everything.  There 
is  probably  a  suggestion  that  knowledge  is  discrimination 
— when  you  know  a  thing,  you  differentiate  it  from  other 
things,  and  Nous  separated  things  both  physically  and 
cognitively.  But  in  any  case,  to  the  Greeks  mind  meant 

I  102  ] 


ANAXAGORAS 

intelligent  self-direction,  involving  both  knowledge  and 
power;  and  since  the  days  of  Xenophanes  the  material 
principles  that  had  been  assumed  by  successive  thinkers 
had  been  endowed  with  both  attributes.  The  originality  of 
Anaxagoras  lay  in  his  conception  of  the  principle  as  sep- 
arate from  the  things  over  which  it  had  power,  and  as 
uniting  purposive  with  physical  causation. 

Plato  and  Aristotle  criticized  Anaxagoras  for  the  place 
he  assigned  to  his  cosmic  Mind.  According  to  the  former, 
Anaxagoras  "made  no  use  of  Mind  at  all;  he  ascribed  no 
causal  power  whatever  in  the  ordering  of  things  to  it,  but 
to  airs,  and  ethers,  and  waters,  and  a  multitude  of  other 
strange  things."  Aristotle,  who  undoubtedly  knew  Plato's 
criticism,  says:  "Anaxagoras  uses  Mind  as  a  deus  ex 
machina,  and  whenever  he  is  unable  to  explain  why  any- 
thing necessarily  is,  he  drags  it  in;  otherwise  he  makes 
anything  but  Mind  the  cause."4  These  two  judgments  of 
Anaxagoras,  by  Plato  and  Aristotle,  are  mutually  contra- 
dictory, for  the  former  complains  that  Mind  had  no  causal 
power  whatever  in  ordering  things,  while  the  latter  says 
that  it  was  used  as  the  cause  of  everything  which  could  not 
be  explained  naturally.  Furthermore  Plato's  statement  that 
Nous  was  not  used  at  all  is  plainly  wrong  in  view  of  the 
express  assertion  of  Anaxagoras  that  Nous  caused  the 
original  revolution,  from  which  came  all  mundane  change. 
Plato  admits  this  in  another  place  (Crat.,  413  c),  and  it 
is  manifest  that  his  criticism  of  Nous  was  really  founded, 
not  on  the  fact  that  it  was  not  used  at  all  (which  is  what 
he  says),  but  on  the  ground  that  it  was  not  used  as  the 
final  cause  or  purpose  of  individual  objects;  that,  however, 
was  precisely  what  Anaxagoras  did  not  mean  to  do,  ex- 

4  Plato,  Phaedo,  97  b  8-98  c  2 ;  Aristotle,  Met.  I,  4.  985  a  18,  983  b  15 ; 
cf.  De  An.,  I,  2.  405  a  15. 

t    103   ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

cept  in  so  far  as  the  original  plan  of  Nous  determined  the 
whole  world.  Finally,  Aristotle's  words  plainly  imply  that 
Anaxagoras  used  Nous  sometimes  as  the  cause  of  particu- 
lar phenomena  of  nature;  and  that  view,  aside  from 
running  counter  to  Plato's  interpretation,  is  opposed  to 
the  whole  tenor  of  the  Anaxagorean  system.  We  are  thus 
forced  to  the  conclusion  that  Plato  and  Aristotle  really 
misinterpreted  the  system  of  Anaxagoras. 

8.  Although  Nous  or  Mind  is  altogether  separate  from 
everything  else,  yet  it  is  said  to  be  "in"  some  things 
(frag.  11);  and  it  is  not  hard  to  guess  that  the  author 
meant  living  forms.  Empedocles  had  held  that  thought  de- 
pended upon  the  even  mixture  of  the  elements  and  that  all 
things  had  it  (frag.  103).  But  Anaxagoras  believed  that 
thought  was  entirely  distinct  from  the  mixture  of  things, 
and  his  doctrine  was  significant  in  that  it  established  the 
first  distinction  between  the  animate  and  the  inanimate. 
Taken  in  conjunction  with  his  cosmology,  in  which  Mind 
was  the  intelligent  first  cause  and  the  world  moved  me- 
chanically, this  distinction  between  animate  and  inani- 
mate paved  the  way  for  adequate  concepts  of  nature,  as 
a  system  of  non-intelligent  moving  phenomena,  and  of  the 
soul  or  mind,  as  a  non-phenomenal  intelligent  agent.  This 
distinction  between  nature  and  mind,  which  Anaxagoras 
only  suggested,  was  not  consciously  made  in  presocratic 
philosophy;  and  as  it  is  involved  in  all  our  modern  para- 
phernalia of  ontological  adjectives,  such  as  materialistic, 
idealistic,  dualistic,  it  is  misleading  to  use  these  terms  of 
early  Greek  thinkers. 

Anaxagoras  held  that  all  Nous  was  the  same,  "both 
the  greater  (cosmic)  and  the  smaller  (human)";  but  he 
does  not  say  how  Nous  can  be  split  up,  so  that  parts  of  it 
can  be  in  different  bodies,  nor  what  the  relation  of  these 

C  104  1 


ANAXAGORAS 

parts  is  to  the  whole.  He  believed  that  plants  and  animals, 
as  well  as  human  beings,  had  Nous,  and  that  the  appar- 
ently various  grades  of  intelligence  were  due  to  differ- 
ences in  bodily  structure,  some  of  which  facilitated,  while 
others  hindered,  the  activity  of  Nous;5  but  he  does  not 
explain  how  mind  can  move  body.  He  also  adopted  the 
view  that  perception  is  a  bodily  process,  and  is  produced 
by  opposites,  so  that  all  sensation  implies  pain;6  and  while 
this  description  is  enough  to  distinguish  perception  from 
thought,  no  relation  between  the  two  processes  is 
established. 

9.  The  extant  fragments  of  Anaxagoras  contain  no 
ethical  or  practical  doctrines,  but  the  tradition  of  the  next 
century  makes  it  plain  that  his  teaching  must  have  con- 
tained such  doctrines.  Plato  says  that  the  discourses  of 
Anaxagoras  mainly  concerned  the  nature  of  intelligence 
and  the  absence  of  intelligence,  and  that  from  these  dis- 
courses Pericles  got  information  which  he  could  use  in 
the  art  of  argumentation.7  The  picture  of  Anaxagoras 
conversing  about  intelligence  and  the  absence  of  intelli- 
gence accords  perfectly  with  the  views  given  above ;  but  it 
goes  further  in  its  implication  that  his  doctrine  of  intelli- 
gence contained  a  possible  practical  reference.  What  this 
was  we  are  not  told;  but  it  at  least  gives  a  basis  of  plausi- 
bility to  the  stories  which  represent  Anaxagoras  as  giving 
supreme  value  to  the  life  of  the  intellect.8  According  to 

5  Arist.,  De  Part.  An.,  IV,  10.  687  a  7. 

6  Theo.,  De  Sensu,  27  ff.  DFV,  p.  310. 

7  Pkaedrus,  270  a.  Burnet's  reading  diavolas  for  dvolas,  misses  the  point 
that  Anaxagoras  differentiated  between  those  things  that  had  Nous  and 
those  that  did  not.  Jowett  translates :  "the  knowledge  of  Mind  and  the 
negative  of  Mind." 

8  Aristotle,  Eth.  Nic,  VI,  7.  1 141  b  3;  X,  9.  1179  a  13;  Eth.  Eud.  I,  4. 
1216  an;  Clem.,  Strom.,  II,  130.  cf.  Euripides,  frag.  910.  All  quoted  DFV, 
p.  299- 

C  105  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

these  reports,  he  held  that  the  end  of  life  was  not  wealth 
or  power,  but  understanding  of  the  world  and  the  order 
that  runs  through  it. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

NEW  TENDENCIES 

l.  While  Empedocles  and  Anaxagoras  were  still  alive 
and  propounding  their  cosmological  theories,  important 
changes  were  proceeding  to  modify  the  traditional  course 
of  Greek  reflective  thought.  There  was  nothing  sudden 
about  the  introduction  of  these  new  elements  and  many 
of  them  were  really  old  implications  that  gradually  gained 
preponderant  emphasis,  when  the  established  tendencies 
had  exhausted  themselves.  There  was,  however,  a  signifi- 
cant shifting  of  the  scene.  Heretofore  the  mainland  of 
Greece  had  not  concerned  itself  to  any  appreciable  extent 
with  philosophical  speculation,  which  had  been  confined 
to  Ionia  and  western  Hellas ;  but  about  the  middle  of  the 
fifth  century,  Athens  rose  to  a  preeminent  position  in  the 
Greek  world,  and  from  that  date  she  acted  as  its  intel- 
lectual capital  until  the  Roman  Emperor  Justinian  dis- 
established the  Academy  in  a.d.  529.  By  this  change 
philosophy  became  to  a  large  degree  localized,  so  that  it 
was  no  longer  the  play  of  a  bold  and  inquisitive  Ionian 
spirit  on  the  equally  bold  but  more  emotional  Western 
temperament,  nor  could  the  circumstances  of  one  city 
offer  a  corrective  reaction  to  meditations  grounded  in 
other  surroundings.  It  was  now  bound  up  with  the  condi- 
tions of  a  particular  place,  and  how  profound  an  influ- 
ence these  conditions  exercised  on  it  can  be  seen  by 
comparing  the  typical  thought  of  the  Sophistic,  the  Pla- 

C  107  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

tonic,  and  the  later  eclectic,  ages  with  their  respective 
historical  backgrounds.1 

2.  Certainly  the  new  home  did  not  furnish  a  soil  that  was 
naturally  hospitable  to  philosophy.  The  Athenian  com- 
mons of  the  fifth  century  were  a  sturdy,  hard-handed  and 
often  bigoted  lot,  in  many  respects  like  the  Romans  of  late 
Republican  times;  and  we  are  prone  to  attribute  to  them 
too  many  spiritual  graces  that  either  were  the  ideals  held 
up  to  them  by  their  more  enlightened  leaders  or  were  the 
typical  boasts  of  popular  oratory.2  They  appreciated  the 
personal  satire  of  an  Aristophanes  or  the  mythological 
scenes  of  a  Sophocles;  but  they  did  not  like  the  philoso- 
phers.3 Anaxagoras,  Diagoras,  Diogenes  of  Apollonia,  and 
Socrates  experienced  the  displeasure  of  the  city  in  various 
forms;4  and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  philosophy  made  its 
home  with  her,  she  produced  only  four  thinkers  of  any 

1  The  influence  may  be  shown  in  a  negative  way  by  the  neglect  of 
Democritus  and  the  loss  of  his  work.  It  might  well  have  been  otherwise 
if  he  had  settled  at  Athens.  Demetrius  Phalereus,  a  credible  author  (ap. 
Diog.  L.  IX,  37),  denied  that  Democritus  ever  went  to  Athens,  but  Deme- 
trius Magnes  {ibid.  36)  asserted  that  he  did  come  and  was  ignored.  Plato 
never  mentions  him  but  it  is  incredible  that  he  had  never  heard  of  Atomism. 

2  On  the  Athens  of  this  period,  Holm,  The  History  of  Greece,  II,  chaps. 
xx  and  xxvi,  is  most  enlightening. 

3  When  Pericles  (Thuc,  II,  40)  said  <t>i\o<ro(t>ovfiev  &vev  /xaXa/c/as  (it  sounds 
like  him),  he  was  perhaps  defending  his  association  with  Anaxagoras  under 
the  cloak  of  a  patriotic  boast;  but  his  audience  probably  understood  the 
verb  in  its  non-technical  sense  as  expressing  merely  a  love  of  wisdom  or 
skill  in  a  general  way.  A  little  later  (ibid.,  3)  he  gives  the  ordinary  view 
that  ignorance  brings  boldness,  calculation  brings  hesitancy.  Cleon  (idem., 
UI,  37,  3)  frankly  prefers  ignorance  with  moderation  to  unbridled  clever- 
ness, for  "inferior  men  as  a  general  rule  manage  cities  better  than  the 
more  intelligent."  Even  Euripides  was  too  "advanced"  to  be  really  popular 
at  Athens.  In  Phaed.,  64  b,  simmias  says  that  most  people  think  philoso- 
phers are  practically  dead  and  would  get  only  what  they  deserve  if  they 
suffered  death ;  this  is  of  course  playful  but  the  very  playfulness  is 
instructive. 

4  Diog.  L.  (IX,  52,  54)  says  that  Protagoras  was  also  prosecuted  and 
condemned;  but  that  seems  hardly  likely  in  view  of  Meno,  91  e  9,  10. 
There  is  a  credible  tradition  that  Phidias  was  also  condemned  by  his  fellow- 
citizens,  but  if  the  charge  was  impiety,  it  must  have  been  a  pretense ;  cf . 
Aristoph.,  Pax,  605,  Philochorus  ap.  schol.  in  Aristoph.,  Pax  (Dindorf), 
IV,  III,  p.  78,  Plutarch,  Pericles,  31. 

C  108: 


NEW  TENDENCIES 

note — Archelaus,5  Socrates,  Antisthenes,  and  Plato. 
Under  these  circumstances  one  is  likely  to  wonder  why 
philosophy  ever  came  to  Athens,  or  stayed  there  when  it 
did  come.  But  apparently  with  philosophy  as  such  the 
Athenians  had  no  quarrel — at  least  no  quarrel  that  was 
justiciable.  Moreover  it  was  part  of  their  tradition  to 
let  men  think  as  they  saw  fit.6  We  shall  probably  never 
be  sure  of  the  real  reasons  that  led  to  the  prosecution  of 
these  philosophers,  but  in  any  case  it  was  as  individuals 
and  not  as  a  profession  that  they  suffered  at  the  hands 
of  the  democracy.  The  Athenians  did  not,  like  the  Romans, 
expel  the  whole  tribe  of  philosophers.7  But  we  shall  prob- 
ably not  be  far  wrong  in  surmising  that  the  unfortunate 
individuals  had  either  interfered  with  the  city's  estab- 
lished religious  practices  or  been  too  closely  associated 
with  traitorous  aristocrats,  or  both.  The  long  continued 
gravity  with  which  the  mutilation  of  the  Hermae  was 
treated  shows  how  deeply  the  democracy  could  be  stirred 
by  a  combination  of  religious  horror  and  political  fear. 

Yet  about  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century  philosophers 
began  coming  to  Athens  and  they  kept  on  coming.  Anaxa- 
goras  was  probably  the  first  and  it  seems  likely  that  he  was 
brought  there  by  Pericles,  perhaps  about  460  b.c.  Arche- 
laus, a  native  Athenian,  must  have  begun  his  studies  not 

5  The  supposition  that  Archelaus  was  a  Milesian  (Diog.  L.,  II,  17,  7, 
accepted  by  Ueberweg-Heintze  and  by  Myres  in  Anthropology  and  the 
Classics,  p.  156)  cannot  be  allowed  in  view  of  the  weight  of  ancient  testi- 
mony against  it. 

6  In  the  Funeral  Oration,  Thucydides  makes  Pericles  say :  "The  freedom 
which  we  enjoy  in  our  government  extends  also  to  our  ordinary  life"  (II, 
37,  2,  trans.  Crawley),  and  a  little  later  he  uses  the  phrase  "living  without 
restraint"  (II,  39,  l).  But  he  makes  it  plain  that  they  obeyed  the  laws  and 
in  their  practice  even  recognized  unwritten  laws.  Their  freedom  was  self- 
restraint,  but  also  a  refusal  to  organize  efficiently. 

7  cf .  Thuc,  II,  39,  l :  "Our  city  is  wide  open  and  we  never  by  acts  against 
aliens  deprive  anyone  of  opportunity  to  learn  or  observe."  An  alien  act 
would  have  expelled  all  the  Sophists.  The  Athenians  encouraged  immigra- 
tion for  commercial  reasons. 

C  109  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

long  afterward,  for  he  was  a  pupil  of  Anaxagoras  and  a 
teacher  of  Socrates.  Parmenides  and  Zeno  of  Elea  prob- 
ably visited  the  city  about  the  middle  of  the  century;  and 
Socrates,  who  must  have  been  already  interested  in  phi- 
losophy, met  them  at  that  time.  Protagoras  made  two 
visits  to  the  city,  probably  before  432  B.C.,  and  Gorgias 
came  on  his  embassy  in  427  b.c.  Diogenes  of  Apollonia 
must  have  been  there  before  the  production  of  the  Clouds 
of  Aristophanes  in  423  b.c,  as  the  character  of  Socrates 
in  the  play  expounds  several  of  his  doctrines.  Of  Hippias 
and  Prodicus,  Hippon  and  Melissus,  and  many  lesser 
lights  we  know  practically  nothing;  Leucippus  and  Philo- 
laus  probably  never  were  in  Athens.  Special  causes  brought 
some  of  the  foreigners;  but  the  policy  and  character  of 
Pericles,  the  outstanding  position  of  Athens,  and  the  in- 
creasing use  of  rhetoric,  especially  on  the  part  of  the  rich 
aristocratic  minority,  no  doubt  exercised  a  general 
attraction. 

3.  The  diversity  of  views  maintained  by  these  thinkers 
may  well  have  produced  a  sort  of  mental  dizziness  in 
philosophic  circles.  If  we  consider  merely  the  third' quar- 
ter of  the  century,  we  find  progressive  cosmology  (Em- 
pedocles,  Anaxagoras),  reactionary  and  eclectic  cosmology 
(Archelaus  and  Diogenes),  Eleatic  dialectic  (Parmenides, 
Zeno,  Melissus),  the  Sophists  and  Socrates;  and  to  this 
mixture  we  ought  to  add  a  good  handful  of  mysticism  from 
Orphic  and  Pythagorean  sources,  and  a  pinch  of  pure 
mathematics  and  astronomy.  Such  multifarious  activity 
in  so  short  a  span  of  years  and  in  such  close  proximity 
could  not  produce  fruitful  results;  and  the  whole  half- 
century  is,  from  the  philosophic  point  of  view,  chiefly  a 
period  of  transition.  It  is  like  a  stream  which,  augmented 
by  several  others  almost  at  the  same  spot,  broadens  in- 

C  1103 


NEW  TENDENCIES 

stead  of  deepening  to  take  care  of  the  increased  volume, 
and  then  immediately  falls  through  a  rapids  filled  with 
eddies  and  cross  currents.  Within  this  reach  philosophy 
had  no  character  because  it  had  many  characters.  But 
there  emerged  from  the  welter  two  quite  definite  courses : 
the  atomistic,  which  successfully  carried  on  the  old  cos- 
mology much  improved  by  its  late  association  with  other 
interests;8  and  the  idealistic,  which  led  through  Socrates 
and  Plato.  The  Pythagoreans  for  a  time  carried  on  their 
traditional  independence,  but  soon  became  virtually 
merged  with  the  Idealists. 

It  should  now  be  apparent  that  the  Sophists  and  Socra- 
tes did  not  have  the  last  half  of  the  century  to  themselves, 
as  is  frequently  to  be  inferred  from  the  histories  of  phi- 
losophy. The  old  cosmology  lived  on  amid  the  new 
interests.  Socrates  talked  with  Parmenides.  Protagoras 
and  Empedocles  may  very  likely  have  met  at  Thurii. 
Probably  Anaxagoras  did  not  leave  Athens  till  shortly 
before  the  outbreak  of  the  Peloponnesian  War,  possibly 
as  late  as  432  b.c.  And  even  after  the  death  of  these  old 
great  ones,  minor  figures  prolonged  the  Ionian  and  the 
Eleatic  Schools  with  reactionary,  radical,  or  eclectic  fea- 
tures. The  Sophists  then  represent  but  one  among  several 
contemporary  tendencies. 

4.  Philosophically  speaking,  the  Sophists  began  as  the 
radical  party;9  but  like  most  radical  parties,  they  were  a 
mongrel  lot,  united,  if  at  all,  by  their  opposition  to  the 

8  The  older  view  which  treated  Democritus  as  a  presocratic  has  been 
generally  superseded.  He  was  probably  a  younger  contemporary  of  Plato, 
and  the  fragments  of  his  work  show  quite  conclusively  that  he  was  influ- 
enced by  ethical  and  epistemological  considerations  in  a  form  that  was 
typical  of  the  Socratic  age. 

9  It  seems  probable  that  Gorgias  and  Protagoras,  like  Socrates,  had  been 
interested  in  natural  science  before  they  turned  to  humanistic  studies — 
Gorgias  an  Empedoclean,  Protagoras  a  Heraclitean. 

C  m  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

established  order.  Now  the  established  order  in  philosophy 
at  the  time  was  cosmology,  and  with  respect  to  it  the 
Sophists  took  up  a  hostile  attitude  which  ranged  from  the 
mild  relativism  of  Protagoras  to  the  stark  nihilism  of 
Gorgias.  Again  as  usual  in  such  situations,  the  radicals 
were  immensely  strengthened  by  the  extremists  among 
the  conservatives,  who  were  represented  at  the  time  chiefly 
by  the  Eleatics.  The  experiment  of  Parmenides  in  apply- 
ing the  principles  of  rhetorical  argumentation  to  cosmo- 
logical  inquiry  had  produced  a  deep  impression,  especially 
at  Athens.10  But  this  new  method,  as  employed  by  the  fol- 
lowers of  Parmenides,  had  by  its  vigorous  logic  forced 
conclusions  so  violently  opposed  to  the  commonest  sense 
that  there  was  a  generally  unfavorable  reaction  not  only 
to  it  but  to  all  cosmology.  And  the  extravagant  claims  of 
such  a  scientist  as  Empedocles  must  have  aided  the  reac- 
tion from  another  quarter.11  The  conflicting  and  irrecon- 
cilable solutions  of  the  cosmological  problem,  together 
with  the  obvious  absurdity  and  uselessness  of  the  dia- 
lectical puzzles  that  were  now  put  forward  as  explanations 
of  nature,  began  by  throwing  doubt  on  the  whole  construc- 
tion, and  finally  induced  a  feeling  of  weariness  and  disgust 
with  natural  science  in  general.  The  inevitable  result  was 
scepticism,  evidence  of  which  is  found  directly  in  the 
Sophists  and  indirectly  in  the  attempts  of  such  thinkers 
as  Philolaus,  Socrates,  and  Democritus,  to  escape  from  it 
by  developing  a  theory  of  knowledge. 

Of  course,  beside  opposition  to  cosmology  there  were 
several  other  factors  that  led  to  the  rise  of  Sophistry.  In 
the  breakdown  of  the  older  learning,  new  interests  came 
to  the  fore  and  got  room  to  develop.  We  can  distinguish 


10  Perhaps  largely  due  to  the  presence  of  Zeno. 

11  See  above,  p.  92. 

C  112  3 


NEW  TENDENCIES 

what  are  now  called  grammar  (Prodicus),  rhetoric  (Gor- 
gias),  ethics  (Socrates,  Gorgias),  and  epistemology  (Pro- 
tagoras, Socrates)  ;  and  each  of  these  new  subjects  had  its 
professors.  Now  all  these  subjects  have  one  thing  in  com- 
mon, as  compared  with  the  previous  cosmology :  they  are 
concerned  in  some  way  with  human  activity.  The  main 
concern  of  cosmology  had  been  the  great  elements  of 
nature ;  but  after  the  Milesians  there  had  been  a  growing 
interest  in  knowledge  and  conduct  which  culminated  in 
Anaxagoras'  choice  of  Mind  as  the  principle.  When 
natural  science  fell  into  disrepute,  the  humanistic  studies 
immediately  came  to  the  front,  and  it  is  therefore  proper 
to  think  of  the  Sophists  and  Socrates  as  starting  a  move- 
ment whose  negative  side  was  a  revolt  against  cosmology 
and  whose  positive  side  was  Humanism.  It  would  further- 
more be  true  that,  while  there  were  other  old  and  new  ten- 
dencies, the  predominant  emphasis  of  the  last  quarter  of 
the  century  was  on  human  activity. 

5.  The  positive  and  negative  aspects  of  the  new  move- 
ment are  well  expressed  in  the  antithesis  between  nature 
(<f>vcrL<s)  and  law  (^o/xo?),  which  was  characteristic  of  the 
period.12  We  have  seen  reason  to  suppose  that  the  earlier 

12  Plato  is  historically  correct  when  he  makes  Hippias  say :  "Law,  a 
tyrant  over  men,  compels  many  things  contrary  to  nature"  (Prot.,  337  d). 
For  a  full  discussion  of  the  antithesis  see  Gorg.,  482  e-492  c;  and 
Antiphon  the  Sophist  in  Oxyrh.  Papyri,  Vol.  XI,  No.  1364.  Beardslee  {The 
use  of  4>T2I2,  etc.,  p.  70)  says  that  the  various  expressions  of  this  anti- 
thesis "can  be  reduced  to  four  contrasts,  that  between  character  and  train- 
ing, that  between  reality  and  the  conventional  but  generally  erroneous 
interpretation  of  that  reality,  that  between  the  normal  and  the  erratic,  that 
between  the  self-directed  and  that  which  obeys  impulses  from  without." 
I  doubt  whether  Professor  Burnet  (Gk.  Phil.,  p.  106)  is  right  in  making 
Herodotus  the  exponent  of  this  spirit.  What  Herodotus  (III,  38)  says  is 
that  if  you  should  give  men  a  choice  of  all  the  religious  practices  of  the 
world,  each  would  choose  those  of  his  own  nation.  That  sounds  more  like 
Xenophanes  and  Ionia  than  Protagoras  and  Hippias  and  Athens;  there  is 
no  hint  in  Herodotus  that  such  conventions  are  "unnatural."  cf.  Myres  in 
Anthropology  and  the  Classics,  p.  158. 

C  113  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

natural  inquiry  had  thought  of  nature  in  terms  of  human 
activity.  At  first  the  attitude  of  the  investigator,  like  Hera- 
clitus,  had  been  that  nature  was  everything;  and  if  the 
terms  of  human  activity  could  be  extended  to  nature,  it 
was  because  man  was  only  a  part  of  nature,  and  the  whole 
would  behave  like  any  of  its  parts.  The  practical  side  of 
the  inquiry  was  merely  the  adjustment  of  the  part  to  the 
whole.  But  Anaxagoras  seemed  to  appreciate  that  the 
problem  was  not  quite  so  simple.  Natural  regularity,  for 
example,  had  no  analogue  in  the  mental  activity  of  men, 
and  mind  had  a  power  of  self-direction  which  was  not 
present  in  things.  The  question  was  how  to  find  room  in 
the  same  world  for  both  natural  regularity  and  purposive 
intelligence;  and  Anaxagoras  attempted  to  answer  the 
question  by  building  up  a  mechanical  system  as  far  as  it 
would  go,  and  then  superimposing  mind  upon  it.  But  at 
least  this  means  that  the  old  cosmology  at  the  end  had 
been  able  to  develop  some  idea  of  mechanical  regularity. 
Moreover  the  new  antithesis  between  nature  and  law  was 
founded  on  the  assumption  that  nature  is  regular  in  a 
sense  that  is  inapplicable  to  intelligence;  and  we  must 
suppose  that  this  antithesis  was  not  generally  meant  as 
denying  the  scientific  view  of  natural  regularity.  What  it 
did  mean  was,  first,  that  man  and  nature  were  two  differ- 
ent things;  and  second,  that  investigation  of  nature  was 
useless  for  understanding  man,  who  was  after  all  the 
raison  d'etre  of  the  whole  inquiry.  The  relation  of  man  to 
the  world  had  become  an  uninteresting  enigma,  and 
thinkers  turned  their  attention  to  human  beings  by  and 
for  themselves. 

6.  In  so  doing,  philosophy  was  only  acknowledging  for- 
mally what  people  had  been  thinking  about  for  some  time. 
The  Greeks  had  been  growing  conscious  of  themselves 

C  "4  3 


NEW  TENDENCIES 

and  their  powers,  and  they  were  trying  to  find  how  far 
those  powers  could  go.  One  of  the  mottoes  at  Delphi  had 
been  "Know  thyself,"  and  Heraclitus  said  "I  investigated 
myself."  Parmenides  had  considered  human  reason  and 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  "it  must  needs  be  that  what 
can  be  thought  and  spoken  of  is" — that  thought  had  some 
kind  of  a  bearing  on  reality.  In  another  sphere,  Solon,  an 
Athenian  man,  had  done  what  had  previously  been  con- 
sidered a  divine  prerogative,  namely,  given  laws  to  his 
fatherland;  and  Pindar  sang  of  "Law  the  King  of  all" — 
not  natural  rights  or  crystallized  custom  or  legislative 
enactment,  but  vojjlos,  constitutive  law  based  on  a  high 
sense  of  justice.13  The  Persian  Wars  had  shown  the  power 
of  unaided  manly  valor.  "Not  only  the  cringing  priests  at 
Delphi,  but  the  common  Greek  citizen  looked  up  with 
reverential  awe  to  great  Moguls  like  Croesus  and  Cam- 
byses"  ;14  and  yet  when  the  Persians  came,  the  Greeks  with 
far  fewer  forces  turned  them  back  on  land  and  sea,  and 
their  awe  began  to  turn  into  a  contempt  which  material- 
ized about  eighty  years  later  when  a  band  of  ten  thousand 
Greeks  ventured  to  march  into  the  heart  of  the  great 
Persian  Empire.  Herodotus  manifests  this  feeling  of 
superiority  to  all  Oriental  civilization,  that  of  Lydia  and 
of  Egypt  as  well  as  of  Persia.  "Only  in  Greece,"  his  atti- 

13  Both  Herodotus  (III,  38)  and  Plato  (Gorg.,  484  b)  seem  to  misinter- 
pret Pindar's  thought  to  suit  their  own  purposes.  The  historian  uses  v6/juh 
in  the  sense  of  custom  or  convention,  which  is  just  what  Pindar  does  not 
mean;  and  the  philosopher  uses  it  in  the  sense  of  natural  justice,  which 
would  probably  have  been  meaningless  to  the  poet.  What  Pindar  seems 
to  have  in  mind  was  law  that  was  above  all  customary  laws,  based  on  a 
high  sense  of  justice  only  applicable  to  a  superman  like  Heracles.  But 
evidently  the  line  was  a  common  quotation  and  could  carry  any  convenient 
meaning,  as  Professor  Burnet  observes  (Gk.  Phil.,  p.  107,  n.  l). 

14Zimmern,  p.  179.  Speaking  of  the  Athenian  Empire  that  grew  up  out 
of  the  Persian  menace,  Pericles  remarks :  dvdpes  euJrct  itcrfoavro  (Thucyd.,  II, 
43,  l).  So  also  happiness  is  not  the  gift  of  the  gods  but  comes  from  free- 
dom and  freedom  from  valor  (ibid.,  4). 

C  n5  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

tude  assumes,  "is  there  mastery  of  man  over  nature,  and 
that  not  because  nature  is  less  strong,  but  because  Greek 
man  is  strong  enough  to  dominate  it."15  It  was  exactly  this 
feeling  of  domination  over  nature  that  Empedocles  had 
exaggerated  in  several  wild  predictions  of  his  prowess. 
Self-reliance  became  a  virtue  and  the  strong  man,  of  whom 
Heracles  was  the  type,  must  have  been  a  popular  theme;16 
Euripides  in  his  play  of  that  name  sounds  a  warning  that 
such  superior  strength  ought  to  justify  itself  in  the  service 
of  humanity.  It  was  under  such  circumstances  that  Anaxa- 
goras  made  mind  the  ruler  of  all  things  and  Protagoras 
made  man  the  measure  of  all  things. 

Ostensibly  therefore  the  Sophistic  movement  was  mainly 
concerned  with  the  investigation  of  man  and  his  capacities ; 
but  owing  to  its  reaction  against  cosmology,  it  investigated 
man  as  man  and  without  reference  to  his  position  in  the 
universe.  Now  there  is  no  reason  why  opposition  to  natural 
science  should  carry  with  it  hostility  to  religion — the  two 
are  frequently  found  in  inverse  proportion.  No  other  evi- 
dence therefore  can  more  strikingly  attest  the  degree  to 
which  cosmology  had  absorbed  religion  among  the  philo- 
sophically minded  than  the  fact  that,  when  cosmology 
was  thrown  aside  in  the  Socratic  age,  large  numbers  of 
them  could  treat  of  the  great  questions  of  human  life 
without  any  reference  to  religious  considerations.17  And 
so,  in  the  absence  of  both  cosmological  and  religious  com- 

15  Myres  in  Anthropology  and  the  Classics,  p.  151  (quoted  by  zimmern). 

16  The  old  ethico-religious  doctrine  that  no  man  was  self-sufficient  or 
completely  happy  is  given  in  Pindar,  Nem.,  VII,  55,  Herod.,  1,  32.  But 
Pericles  in  the  Funeral  Oration  takes  pride  in  the  fact  that  the  Athenians 
do  not  trust  so  much  in  external  circumstances  as  in  their  own  native 
spirit  (II,  39,  l),  and  tend  to  become  self-sufficient  individuals  (II,  41,  l). 

17  There  is  an  instructive  passage  on  the  general  topic  in  Lecky,  History 
of  European  Morals,  I,  p.  161.  Outside  the  philosophic  circles,  external 
conditions  had  helped  to  weaken  the  ancient  religion  and  produce  scepti- 
cism, e.g.  human  lawgivers,  the  position  of  the  Delphic  Oracle,  and  the 
rise  of  the  commercial  spirit. 

C  116] 


NEW  TENDENCIES 

plications,  their  problem  was  this :  leaving  out  of  account 
everything  else  and  considering  only  man's  actions,  what 
does  it  mean  to  be  a  human  being*?  or,  given  human  activ- 
ity, what  principles  may  be  discovered  in  it?  Human  life 
was  analyzed  in  much  the  same  way  as  a  physiologist  dis- 
sects a  frog,  and  the  result  was  a  secular,  unmetaphysical 
ethics. 

7.  However,  we  should  miss  part  of  the  historical  value 
of  the  humanistic  movement,  if  we  went  no  further  than 
its  professions.  The  problem  of  the  ultimate  nature  of  the 
universe  can  never  be  wholly  superseded.  Many  of  the 
topics  which  engaged  the  attention  of  the  Sophists,  being 
partly  the  result  of  dissatisfaction  with  previous  natural 
science,  in  reality  had  implications  that  reached  out  far 
beyond  their  particular  provinces,  and  thus  helped  to  lay 
the  foundations  for  a  new  explanation  of  the  world,  in 
which  science  held  its  rightful  place.  The  famous  doctrine 
of  Protagoras  that  "man  is  the  measure  of  all  things,  of 
things  that  are  that  they  are,  of  things  that  are  not  that 
they  are  not"  is  certainly  comprehensive  enough  to  include 
the  data  of  science;  indeed  the  point  of  the  assertion, 
which  deals  with  the  existence  or  non-existence  of  things, 
shows  that  the  objects  of  which  man  was  the  measure 
might  be  the  same  as  those  which  had  formed  the  matter 
of  scientific  dispute.  Aristotle  even  represents  Protagoras 
as  arguing  against  the  geometrical  proposition  that  a 
straight  line  can  touch  a  circle  at  only  one  point.18  Prob- 
ably Protagoras  did  not  develop  a  comprehensive  theory 
of  reality;  but  his  doctrine  could  be  used  as  the  basis  for 
such  a  theory,  as  Plato  saw  when  he  elaborated  a  thorough- 
going sensationalism  from  it  in  the  Theaetetus.  And  so 
investigation  of  the  conditions  of  knowledge,  the  functions 

18  Met.,  in,  2.  998  a  2. 

C  "7  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

and  powers  of  the  mind,  the  nature  of  society,  became  his- 
torically a  sort  of  propaedeutic  to  a  more  complete  and 
systematic  philosophy  of  the  world. 

8.  Individually  the  Sophists  were  merely  professional 
wise  men,  that  is,  men  who  made  a  business  of  learning, 
though  that  was  not  necessarily  their  only  occupation. 
Both  the  term  and  the  thing  appear  to  be  old;  but  the 
name  does  not  seem  to  be  used  for  philosophers  before  the 
Periclean  Age,  though  after  it  became  current  in  this  sense, 
it  was  applied  to  earlier  personages  who  had  claimed  to  be 
wise.19  In  many  respects  the  Sophists  were  like  the  cosmol- 
ogists.  They  frequently  travelled  about,  but  so  had  Xeno- 
phanes,  Pythagoras,  and  Empedocles;  they  claimed  sur- 
passing wisdom,  but  so  had  most  of  the  cosmologists;  they 
taught  their  doctrines,  and  in  this  again  they  were  like  the 
earlier  thinkers.  But  there  were  two  novel  features  in  the 
practice  of  the  Sophists:  the  wisdom  they  taught  was 
practical  in  a  new  sense,  and  most  of  them  took  money 
for  their  instruction. 

The  wisdom  of  the  physiologues  had  a  practical  bearing 
in  teaching  men  how  they  ought  to  live  in  a  world  organ- 
ized on  such  and  such  principles,  but  the  wisdom  itself  was 
not  ordinarily  practical.20  On  the  other  hand,  the  knowl- 
edge which  the  Sophists  professed  to  impart  was  always 

19  The  word  is  used  by  Aeschylus  (Prometk.,  62,  943)  and  Pindar  (istk., 
4,  31)  of  a  clever  artist  or  artisan.  Herodotus  (I,  29;  II,  49;  IV,  95)  calls 
Solon,  Pythagoras,  and  the  founders  of  the  Dionysiac  cult  sophists. 
Diogenes  of  Apollonia  (ap.  simpl.,  Phys.,  i£l,  20  DFV,  p.  329)  and  Xeno- 
phon  (Mem.,  I,  l,  11)  applied  the  term  to  the  physiologues  or  cosmolo- 
gists. It  was  also  given  to  Homer  and  Hesiod,  and  all  musical  artists,  and 
Plato  uses  it  of  geometers  (Meno,  85  b  5).  Probably  Plato  (Protag.,  316  d- 
317  d,  348  e-349  a)  is  right  in  making  Protagoras  the  first  to  call  himself 
a  sophist  in  the  new  sense. 

20  We  might  make  a  partial  exception  for  Heraclitus  who  demonstrated 
that  drunkenness  was  unscientific,  and  for  Empedocles  who  claimed  that 
his  cosmology  would  discover  "drugs  that  are  a  defense  against  the  evils 
of  old  age." 

I  n8  ] 


NEW  TENDENCIES 

based  on  some  human  activity,  such  as  speech  or  thought 
or  politics,  and  the  purpose  of  it  was  to  make  those  who 
had  it  "better,"  that  is,  more  capable  and  successful  in  the 
particular  activity.21  We  might  therefore  say  that  while 
the  cosmologists  had  attempted  to  enable  men  to  take 
advantage  of  nature,  the  Sophists  undertook  to  teach  men 
how  to  take  advantage  of  organized  society. 

It  was  certainly  time  for  Philosophy  to  explore  the 
human  being  with  his  vast  import  for  the  meaning  of  the 
world;  and  we  could  even  forgive  the  Sophists  for  neg- 
lecting that  import  if  they  had  gone  straightforwardly  to 
work  in  investigating  humanity.  But  the  truth  is  that  the 
Sophists,  as  a  rule,  were  not  philosophers  at  all;  they 
were  merely  philosophical  opportunists.  That  is  only  an- 
other way  of  saying  that  there  was  a  demand  for  instruc- 
tion in  these  subjects,  and  the  Sophists  were  men  who 
undertook  to  satisfy  that  demand.  Probably  Protagoras 
and  Gorgias,  and  possibly  Hippias  and  Prodicus,  were 
genuinely  interested  in  their  researches;  but  the  success 
they  gained  at  Athens  showed  the  possibilities  of  lectur- 
ing, and  later  Sophists  did  not  scruple  to  put  up  for  sale 
what  was  merely  a  superficial  cleverness  frequently  mixed 
with  a  considerable  amount  of  pretense. 

9.  Of  course  no  Athenian  gentleman  would  have  stooped 
to  teach  for  money,  or  become  a  "professional"  of  any 
sort;  and  so  the  new  masters  were  foreigners.22  But  the 
strangest  part  of  the  whole  business  was  not  that  these 
foreigners  accepted  money,  but  that  so  many  Athenians 
would  pay  it.  What  was  this  new  interest  in  learning  in 
a  city  that  had  never  worried  about  instructing  its  youth, 
save  in  the  art  of  war?  Certainly  it  was  not  the  Athenian 

21  They  were  thus  the  authors  of  the  vocational  training  idea. 

22  They  came  from  Leontini,  Agrigentum,  Thurii,  Elis,   Corinth,   Ceos, 
Paros,  Abdera,  Chalcedon,  and  even  Macedonia  and  Aeolia. 

C  "9  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

workman  clamoring  for  an  education;  he  had  no  money 
to  spend  on  such  an  unnecessary  thing,  and  he  undoubtedly 
disbelieved  in  it  anyway,  as  tending  toward  impiety.  Prob- 
ably Pericles  himself  started  the  practice  by  his  association 
with  Anaxagoras,  from  whom  he  got  "whatever  was  of 
advantage  for  the  art  of  speech."23  His  success  would 
appeal  to  two  classes  of  people:  those  who  wished  to 
become  political  leaders,  like  Critias  and  Alcibiades,24  and 
those  who  wished  to  oppose  the  democracy  either  in  order 
to  protect  themselves  or  to  put  the  aristocracy  back  in  the 
saddle.  These  two  classes  would  not  necessarily  be  dis- 
tinct, as  the  purely  democratic  leaders  like  Cleon  would 
probably  not  associate  with  Sophists ;  and  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  clientele  seems  to  have  been  almost  exclusively 
the  aristocrats.  There  were  no  doubt  some  of  these  who 
were  sincerely  interested  in  philosophical  questions  regard- 
ing knowledge,  conduct,  and  government,  or  Socrates 
would  not  have  found  as  many  opportunities  for  conversa- 
tion as  he  did  ;25  and  we  must  admit  too  that  the  discussion 
of  the  Sophists  tended  to  bring  these  questions  before  an 
ever-widening  circle  in  the  state  and  so  acted  as  a  medium 
of  culture. 

In  a  city  that  was  traditionally  careless  in  education, 

23  Plato,  Phaedr.,  270  a  9.  10.  r^xvV  t&v  Xfryw?  included  argumentation  as 
well  as  rhetorical  devices. 

24  Xen.,  Mem.,  I,  2,  says  that  these  two  "had  set  out  from  the  very  be- 
ginning to  govern  the  city."  But  the  family  of  Critias  belonged  to  the 
moderate  liberal  party  and  we  need  not  credit  him  in  his  early  association 
with  the  Sophists  with  the  cruel  and  reactionary  designs  that  he  carried 
out  as  leader  of  the  Thirty.  The  great  debates  of  the  Peloponnesian  War 
furnished  wonderful  opportunities  for  such  men  to  gain  power.  "Such 
occasions  brought  to  the  fore  a  new  type  of  public  man,  who  had  served  no 
apprenticeship  of  responsibility  in  the  business  affairs  of  state,  at  best  the 
thinker  and  the  moralist,  but  too  often  only  the  accomplished  Parliamen- 
tarian. .  .  ."  Zimmern,  p.  169. 

26  The  associates  of  Socrates  were  also  from  the  rich,  leisured  class 
(Plato,  ApoL,  23  c  3)  ;  but  these  are  to  be  distinguished  from  the  close 
friends  named  in  Phaed.,  59  b. 

[    120    ] 


NEW  TENDENCIES 

these  lectures  and  the  arguments  they  evoked  undoubtedly 
paved  the  way  for  the  Academy  and  the  Lyceum,  estab- 
lished in  the  next  century  as  permanent  institutions  of 
instruction.  But  the  sophistic  teaching  itself  was  too  un- 
organized and  depended  too  closely  on  the  demand  for 
it,  to  become  a  free  and  fearless  agency  of  philosophy. 
More  and  more  its  rhetoric  turned  into  oratorical  devices 
to  cajole  a  mob,  and  its  arguments  into  spurious  logic. 
Moreover  these  were  minor  matters  compared  with  the 
devastating  and  general  effect  of  the  necessity  to  be  prac- 
tical in  order  to  satisfy  the  demand  for  instruction;  for 
this  meant  that  the  inquiry  into  the  nature  of  man  was 
limited  strictly  to  man's  activities.  What  the  Athenian 
nobles  wanted  to  know  was  how  to  succeed  in  certain  pur- 
suits, and  the  Sophists  therefore  had  to  study  how  men 
did  succeed  and  to  invent  new  ways  of  succeeding  under 
the  same  conditions.  Philosophical  inquiry  in  their  hands 
thus  became  like  some  modern  practical  psychology:  first 
conduct  tests  to  determine  what  kind  of  advertising  pays 
and  then  teach  people  how  to  advertise  that  way.  The 
greatest  human  aspirations,  the  deepest  wellsprings  of 
action  were  ruled  out  of  court;  the  Sophists  could  not  go 
beyond  activities,  the  external  manifestations  of  men. 
Hence  the  "goodness"  which  they  professed  to  teach  was 
usually  a  rule-of-thumb  cleverness,  and  the  name  was  a 
misnomer  skilfully  advertised.  They  also  claimed  that  vir- 
tue was  knowledge,  but  that  again  was  part  of  their  adver- 
tisement and  in  their  mouths  amounted  to  little  more  than 
the  sombre  platitude:  before  you  can  do  anything  well, 
you  have  to  know  how.  In  short,  with  the  exception  of  a 
very  few  of  the  earliest,  the  Sophists  represented  intellec- 
tual insincerity,  and  that  in  all  scientific  and  reflective 

C  121  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

inquiry  must  be  regarded  as  the  prostitution  of  purity 
itself. 

From  the  historical  point  of  view,  the  real  pity  of  the 
situation  is  that  the  Sophists  failed  as  leaders  of  the 
humanistic  movement.  When  they  began  their  teaching, 
there  was  undoubtedly  a  healthy  and  a  growing  interest 
in  political  and  social  problems.  Athens,  at  the  head  of 
her  League  and  to  all  intents  an  imperial  city,  was  in- 
wardly developing  toward  a  more  and  more  complete 
democracy.  At  a  time  when  this  city  was  the  foremost  in 
all  Greece,  her  burgesses  were  being  called  upon  to  decide 
questions  of  far-reaching  and  vital  concern,  not  only  to 
themselves,  but  to  a  large  part  of  the  Greek  world.  In  the 
legislative  assembly  and  the  probouleutic  council,  in 
political  clubs  or  before  the  law-courts,  there  was  con- 
stantly brought  into  play  every  art  by  which  one  man 
endeavors  to  realize  his  desire  through  the  action  of  his 
fellows.  Persuasive  rhetoric  was  not  a  new  thing,  even 
in  Athens,  though  Gorgias,  when  he  came  to  the  city, 
was  able  to  elaborate  it  considerably  with  devices  which 
had  been  artistically  worked  out  in  his  native  Sicily.  But 
external  circumstances,  such  as  the  spread  of  the  city's 
foreign  power  and  the  increase  of  public  business  which 
according  to  the  Constitution  now  necessitated  forensic 
discussion,  greatly  extended  the  scope  of  oratory.  The 
same  causes,  aided  by  commercial  expansion,  produced  an 
interest,  general  among  the  better  class  of  citizens,  in  the 
questions  of  the  nature  and  validity  of  law,  the  proper 
excellence  of  a  citizen,  the  position  of  women,  the  com- 
parative usefulness  of  various  polities,  and  even  the  fun- 
damental meaning  of  civilization.  Hence  it  was  that  not 
only  the  more  select  and  advanced  thinkers  but  also  the 
general  run  of  educated  citizens  turned  to  political  and 

C    122    ] 


NEW  TENDENCIES 

ethical  problems  with  an  enthusiasm  and  a  seriousness 
and  a  unanimity  which  has  probably  never  been  paral- 
leled. But  the  Sophists,  in  lieu  of  guiding  this  tremendous 
intellectual  activity,  pandered  to  it  for  their  own  advan- 
tage; and  instead  of  giving  it  a  healthy  stimulus,  they 
confined  it  to  the  wealthy  class.  They  taught  the  more 
gifted  how  to  succeed  on  the  level  of  the  least  intelligent, 
and  the  effect  of  their  teaching  was  thus  to  emphasize  and 
perpetrate  the  worst  features  of  a  popular  movement. 

10.  What  the  Sophists  might  have  been  if  either  exter- 
nal conditions  or  human  nature  had  been  different,  Socrates 
showed.  Like  them  he  found  himself  in  opposition  to  the 
old  cosmology  and  in  sympathy  with  the  new  humanism. 
But  he  maintained  an  absolutely  independent  position  and 
was  therefore  free  to  investigate  as  he  chose.26  His  refusal 
to  accept  fees  is  merely  an  indication  of  something  much 
deeper,  an  effect,  not  a  cause;  for  it  shows  that,  while  the 
teachers  about  him  were  willing  to  take  selfish  aggran- 
dizement from  a  widespread  interest  in  philosophical  sub- 
jects, he  alone  pursued  philosophy  as  a  philosopher, 
responding  naturally  to  the  circumstances  of  his  time  and 
place,  yet  wholly  engrossed  in  a  fearless  search  for  truth. 
This  by  itself  is  enough  to  differentiate  him  from  the 
Sophists ;  it  was  a  spiritual  differentia,  of  which  the  refusal 
to  take  monetary  remuneration  was  only  an  outward  sign. 
The  same  difference  of  spirit  produced  a  significant  diver- 
gence in  the  scope  and  nature  of  their  inquiries.  Socrates 
was  ever  trying  to  discover  the  real  man  under  the  surface 
of  his  various  activities,  and  "the  real  man"  included 

26  Instead  of  lecturing  to  exclusive  audiences,  he  was  to  be  found  ev 
iyopq.  (plat.  Apol.,  17  C  ll),  iv rtf  (pavepy ,  where  rois Pov\o/jJvois  igrjv  aKofeiv 
(Xen.,  Mem.,  I,  l,  10).  He  visited  painters,  sculptors,  armorers  (Xen.,  Mem., 
Ill,  10),  politicians,  poets,  and  artisans  (Plat.,  Apol.,  21,  22).  His  associates 
were  rich  because  they  alone  had  leisure  to  follow  him  about. 

C  123  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

motives  and  aspirations  that  were  not  practical  in  the 
sophistic  sense.  Moreover  Socrates  claimed  that  the  pro- 
fessed knowledge  of  the  Sophists,  which  they  had  set  up 
in  place  of  cosmology,  was  not  knowledge  in  the  philo- 
sophical sense  at  all — it  was  merely  intuitive  skill  and 
therefore  could  not  be  taught.27  Goodness  was  of  the  whole 
man,  and  knowledge,  if  there  was  such  a  thing,  was  capa- 
ble of  formulation  in  universal  terms. 

11.  It  will  help  us  to  understand  the  real  import  of 
Sophistry  if  we  take  a  final  glance  at  its  subsequent  histor- 
ical course.  It  was  probably  most  potent  in  the  last  quarter 
of  the  fifth  century.  In  the  next  century  there  were  no 
Sophists  in  the  former  sense  of  the  term,  their  place  as 
purveyors  of  education  being  occupied  by  the  philosophic 
schools,  of  which  the  chief  were  those  of  Aristippus  the 
Cyrenaic,  Antisthenes  the  Cynic,  Euclides  of  Megara, 
Plato,  Isocrates,  and  Aristotle.  But  if  there  were  no 
Sophists  in  the  strict  acceptation,  the  thing  called  Sophis- 
try apparently  did  still  exist,  for  references  to  it  are  found 
in  Plato,  Isocrates,  and  Aristotle.  These  references,  how- 
ever, apply  to  two  somewhat  different  manifestations  of 
one  and  the  same  spirit,  and  they  may  be  distinguished  as 
Eristic  and  Rhetoric.  Eristic  was  the  sophistic  tendency 
for  disputatious  quibbling  carried  over  into  philosophy, 
and  as  such  it  characterized  chiefly  the  work  of  the 
Megaric  School,  whose  arguments  seem  to  have  formed 
the  main  source  of  Aristotle's  work  On  Sophistic  Fallacies. 
But  there  are  other  references,  especially  in  Plato,  which 
cannot  be  directed  against  the  Megarics  and  which  imply 
that  Sophistry  continued  to  exist  in  some  way  as  a  political 
force.  Now  Thucydides  puts  into  the  mouth  of  the  dema- 

27  That  kind  of  skill  comes  Selg.  fiolpg.  (Meno,  99  e  6),  by  a  kind  of  divine 
grace  which  is  equivalent  to  chance. 

C  124  3 


NEW  TENDENCIES 

gogue  Cleon  words  which  can  only  mean  that  Sophistry, 
after  having  been  developed  as  a  weapon  of  the  nobles, 
had  become  the  fashion  of  the  democracy.  Speaking  in  the 
Assembly,  Cleon  complains  that  the  people  are  habituating 
themselves  to  be  "spectators  of  arguments,  auditors  of 
deeds";  "the  highest  ambition  of  every  man  is  to  have 
the  ability  to  speak  himself,  or  short  of  that,  to  vie  with 
those  who  do  speak  by  not  seeming  to  lag  behind  their 
opinions  .  .  .,  simply  carried  away  by  the  pleasure  of 
hearing  some  one  talk,  more  like  those  who  sit  and  listen 
to  Sophists  than  those  who  are  deliberating  for  a  city."2 
Here  the  speaker  is  referring  to  a  popular  delight  in  mere 
political  rhetoric  adapted  to  persuade  a  mob,  and  to  the 
state  of  mind  that  can  be  persuaded  by  such  rhetoric.  After 
this  we  can  understand  what  Plato,  writing  perhaps  in  the 
second  decade  of  the  next  century,  means  when  he  says 
that  the  public  itself  is  the  greatest  Sophist  of  all.29  Soph- 
istry now  is  the  art  of  seeming  to  convince  people  of  what 
they  actually  want,  by  means  of  specious  cleverness,  and  as 
such,  it  is  the  practice  of  the  democracy.  Surely  it  is  a 
piquant  irony  of  fate  that  the  very  class  which  had  ob- 
jected to  the  Sophists  as  corrupters  of  the  youth  and  pur- 
veyors of  subversive  ideas  should  have  urged  on  its  own 
ruin  by  adopting  their  devices. 

12.  Out  of  the  multifarious  philosophical  activity  which 
attended  the  weakening  of  cosmology  and  the  rise  of  the 
humanistic  interest,  there  stand  several  figures  of  sufficient 
intellectual  caliber  and  historical  importance  to  deserve 
individual  mention :  Zeno  and  Melissus,  defenders  of  the 
Eleatic  School  of  Parmenides;  Leucippus,  who  utilized 
the  Eleatic  views  in  originating  a  true  atomism;  Prota- 


28  Thucyd.,  Ill,  38,  4-7. 

29  Rep.,  VI,  492  a  7. 


I    125    ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

goras  and  Gorgias,  early  Sophists  who  attacked  the  gen- 
eral position  of  cosmological  science;  Philolaus,  a  member 
of  the  Pythagorean  Order,  who  revised  its  doctrines  in  the 
light  of  recent  developments  in  philosophy;  and  Socrates, 
who  sympathized  with  the  Sophists  in  their  humanistic 
emphasis  and  with  the  Pythagoreans  in  their  doctrine  of 
soul,  but  was  too  original  to  bind  himself  to  any  group.  In 
order  to  treat  Atomism  as  it  was  actually  given  to  the 
philosophical  tradition  and  as  a  system,  I  shall  violate  the 
historical  order  by  reserving  Leucippus  for  consideration 
with  Democritus.  Separate  chapters  will  be  devoted  to 
Philolaus  and  to  Socrates.  It  remains  therefore  for  us  to 
notice  more  briefly  the  views  of  Zeno  and  Melissus,  Pro- 
tagoras and  Gorgias. 

13.  We  have  seen  how  Empedocles  and  Anaxagoras 
attempted  to  escape  from  Parmenides'  denial  of  motion 
by  means  of  the  assumption  that  the  world  is  not  ulti- 
mately one,  as  he  maintained,  but  many.  The  contempo- 
rary Pythagoreans  may  have  held  similar  views,  and 
Leucippus  made  pluralism  the  foundation  of  his  Atomism. 
Hence  it  was  probably  the  general  view  of  all  thinkers 
capable  of  appreciating  the  logic  of  Parmenides  that  his 
conclusion  could  be  successfully  avoided  by  the  hypothesis 
that  the  world  is  ultimately  more  than  one  thing.  And  the 
task  which  Zeno  and  Melissus,  younger  followers  of  Par- 
menides, undertook  was  to  defend  the  Eleatic  system 
against  this  pluralistic  hypothesis. 

T  Zeno  was  a  native  of  Elea,  where  he  had  been  a  pupil 
pf  Parmenides;  but  he  visited  Athens,  and  it  is  probable 
that  he  spent  some  time  there.  At  any  rate  his  views  were 
well  known,  and  later  writers  give  quotations  from  his 
works.  All  the  evidence  we  have  goes  to  show  that  he 
did  not  make  any  positive  contribution  to  the  Eleatic  doc- 

r.  1263 


NEW  TENDENCIES 

trine,  but  contented  himself  with  attacks  on  the  positions 
of  his  opponents.  His  method  seems  to  have  consisted  in 
taking  a  presupposition  of  these  opponents  and  reducing 
it  to  consequences  that  were  either  contradictory  or  ab- 
surd. For  this  reason  Aristotle  called  him  the  inventor 
of  dialectic;30  but  that  is  a  very  misleading  statement, 
made  from  Aristotle's  particular  point  of  view  (it  would 
not  be  true  of  dialectic  in  Plato's  sense),  and  the 
truth  which  it  tends  to  hide  is  simply  that  Zeno  extended 
the  use  of  purely  logical  argumentation,  employed  con- 
structively in  the  main  by  Parmenides,  to  destroy  opposing 
assumptions. 

Zeno's  arguments  fall  into  two  general  classes,  (1) 
those  that  deal  with  the  mere  assumption  of  multiplicity 
in  the  world  (space),  and  (2)  those  that  introduce  motion 
(space  and  time).  The  former  class  attempts  to  prove  that 
What-is  cannot  be  composed  of  parts,  (a)  because  with 
infinite  divisibility  these  parts  would  have  to  be  so  small 
as  to  have  no  magnitude,  and  yet  so  great  as  to  be  infinite ; 
(b)  because  if  they  had  no  magnitude,  their  addition  and 
subtraction  would  make  no  difference,  and  they  would  be 
nothing  at  all;  (c)  because  they  would  have  to  be  "just 
as  many  as  they  are"  and  thus  finite  in  number,  but  also 
infinite  in  number  because  there  would  always  be  some- 
thing between  any  two  of  them;  (d)  because  everything 
that  existed  would  have  to  be  in  something  and  then  space 
would  be  in  space.  These  arguments  are  thus  directed 
against  the  view  that  the  world  is  composed  of  points  and 
is  spatially  discrete. 

The  other  class  of  arguments,  which  have  become  more 
celebrated,  deal  with  the  same  assumption  of  discreteness 
as  complicated  by  the  further  assumption  of  motion,  (a) 

30  In  a  work  called  The  Sophist,  quoted  by  Diog.,  IX,  25 ;  VIII,  57. 

C  127  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

You  cannot  cross  a  race-course,  because  you  would  first 
have  to  travel  half  the  distance,  and  the  half  of  the  half, 
and  so  on  ad  infinitum,  and  you  cannot  pass  through  an 
infinite  number  of  points  in  any  finite  time,  (b)  Achilles 
can  never  overtake  the  tortoise,  because  he  will  first  have 
to  reach  the  starting-point  of  the  tortoise,  and  by  that  time 
the  tortoise  will  have  reached  a  new  starting-point,  and 
so  on  ad  infinitum,  (c)  The  flying  arrow  is  at  rest,  for  at 
any  given  moment  it  occupies  a  space  equal  to  its  own 
length,  and  such  a  position  is  rest,  (d)  If  we  take  three 
rows  of  bodies  (lines  A,  Z?,  C),  one  of  which,  A,  is  at  rest, 
while  the  second,  B,  moves  past  A  in  one  direction,  and 
the  third,  C,  moves  in  the  opposite  direction  with  equal 
velocity,  then  for  any  position  B  will  have  passed  twice 
as  many  points  of  C  as  of  A,  for  which  it  will  need  twice 
as  many  moments;  but  the  times  are  the  same,  so  that  half 
the  time  equals  double  the  time. 

It  is  important  to  realize  that  these  arguments  are  not 
what  they  seem — mere  paradoxical  quibbles,  which  can 
be  vanquished  "with  a  grin."  Thev  raise  thehighly  signifi- 
cant  and  troublesome  problems  of  continuity  and  infinity, 
and,  when  properly  interpreted,  are  valid  on  the  assumption 
that  finite  spaces  consist  of  a  finite  number  of  points,  and 
finite  times  of  a  finite  number  of  instants.  Bertrand  Rus- 
sell31 has  shown  that  in  consequence  of  Zeno's  arguments 
we  must  hold  either  ( l )  that  space  and  time  do  consist 
of  points  and  instants,  but  the  number  of  them  in  any 
finite  interval  is  infinite — a  view  maintained  by  modern 
mathematicians;  or  (2)  that  space  and  time  do  not  consist 
of  points  and  instants  at  all — a  position  taken  by  certain 
philosophers,  of  whom  Bergson  is  an  example;  or  (3) 

31  Scientific  Method  in  Philosophy,  p.  178. 

C  128  3 


NEW  TENDENCIES 

that  space  and  time  (motion)  are  not  realities — the  con- 
clusion which  Zeno  probably  intended. 

14.  Melissus  was  a  native  of  Samos,  and  so  far  as  we 
know  had  no  connection  with  the  city  of  Elea.  He  did 
however  adopt  the  main  tenets  of  Parmenides,  and  is  there- 
fore classed  as  belonging  to  the  Eleatic  School  of  Phi- 
losophy. To  the  historian  of  philosophy  he  is  memorable 
for  one  positive  contribution  and  for  one  point  of  attack 
on  the  opponents  of  Eleaticism.  The  former  of  these  con- 
sisted in  an  argument  to  prove  that,  contrary  to  Parmeni- 
des, What-is  must  be  infinite;  for  if  it  were  limited 
(finite),  it  could  only  be  limited  by  empty  space,  and 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  empty  space.  The  other  point 
worth  mentioning  is  that  Melissus  attacked  his  pluralistic 
opponents  on  the  ground  that  "if  there  were  many  things, 
they  would  have  to  be  such  as  the  one  is."32  Melissus  meant 
this  argument  as  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  pluralism ;  but 
Leucippus  accepted  it  as  one  of  the  foundation-stones  of 
his  atomism. 

15.  Protagoras  came  from  Abdera  in  Thrace,  the  city 
which  later  became  the  home  of  the  Atomist  School.  He 
was  probably  the  first  to  adopt  the  title  of  Sophist;  and 
we  know  from  Plato  that  he  paid  at  least  two  visits  to 
Athens,  where  his  presence  excited  the  most  lively  interest, 
but  we  do  not  know  how  long  he  remained  in  the  city. 
A  story  is  told  by  later  writers  that  he  was  condemned  for 
impiety  and  all  copies  of  his  book  were  burned,  but  that  is 
highly  improbable.  Pericles  entrusted  him  with  the  impor- 
tant task  of  framing  a  constitution  for  the  colony  of 
Thurii ;  and  this  fact  is  significant  in  showing  that  Prota- 
goras was  regarded  as  both  trustworthy  and  expert  in  the 
principles  of  government.  It  is  impossible  that  such  a  man 

32  frag.  8,  sub  fin.,  DFV,  p.  148. 

C  129  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

should  have  preached  views  which  were  morally  or  politi- 
cally subversive. 

The  doctrine  for  which  Protagoras  became  most  famous 
is  that  "man  is  the  measure  of  all  things,  of  things  that 
are  that  they  are,  and  of  things  that  are  not  that  they  are 
not."  The  statement  in  this  form  is  not  a  lucid  one,  but 
its  basic  meaning  is  fairly  certain.  The  general  aim  of 
cosmological  science  had  been  to  discover  what  Heraclitus 
had  acutely  called  the  "measures"  of  natural  processes, 
that  is,  the  fixed  quantities  or  modes  of  behavior  which 
regulated  changes  in  the  world.  But  in  three  impressive 
ways  this  inquiry  had  issued  in  disappointment.  ( l )  Par- 
menides  had  argued  that  What-is  must  be  quite  different 
from  the  phenomena  of  all  ordinary  experience,  so  differ- 
ent in  fact  that  truth  is  a  divine  revelation  and  sense 
experience  wholly  wrong.  (2)  Mathematicians,  probably 
within  the  Pythagorean  Order,  had  discovered  incom- 
mensurability, which  meant  that  it  is  impossible  to  mea- 
sure the  sides  and  the  diagonal  of  a  square,  for  instance,  in 
the  same  units.  (3)  Every  searcher  after  natural  laws 
had  brought  forth  some  new  necessit)^  of  nature,  which 
was  quite  different  from  all  previous  accounts.  In  the 
light  of  these  facts,  Protagoras  asserted  that  ordinary 
experience  must  judge  what  is  and  what  is  not,  that  for 
all  practical  purposes  you  can  measure  squares  and  their 
diagonals  or  anything  else,  and  that  in  general  the  solid, 
definite  laws  of  mankind  had  not  been  superseded  as  a 
guide  for  action  by  the  supposititious  natural  regulations 
that  every  investigator  had  brought  out  of  his  closet. 

It  is  difficult  to  find  how  far  Protagoras  went  in  the 
interpretation  of  this  fundamental  position,  but  Plato 
is  no  doubt  right  in  explaining  it  to  mean  that  things  are 
to  me  as  they  appear  to  me,  and  to  you  as  they  appear  to 

[   130  ] 


NEW  TENDENCIES 

you;  that  is,  the  doctrine  probably  included  a  relativistic 
aspect.  On  the  other  hand,  Protagoras  was  a  champion  of 
law  and  tradition,  and  he  appears  to  have  believed  that 
while  each  man  may  have  his  own  truth,  one  view  may  be 
better  than  another.  As  Burnet  puts  it,  "The  less  he  could 
admit  anything  to  be  truer  than  anything  else,  the  more 
sure  he  felt  that  we  must  cleave  to  what  is  normal  and 
generally  recognised."33  Protagoras  did  not  carry  his  rela- 
tivism into  morality,  and  he  was  not  an  anarchist. 

16.  Gorgias  of  Leontini  in  Sicily,  a  few  years  junior 
to  Protagoras,  was  less  interested  in  politics  than  in  rhe- 
toric; and  he  is  credited  with  having  introduced  into 
Athens  the  rhetorical  devices  which  had  been  elaborated 
in  his  home.34  His  importance  to  the  history  of  philosophy 
lies  in  the  evidence  he  furnishes  of  the  lengths  to  which 
the  reaction  against  cosmological  science  was  pushed.  We 
are  told  that  he  sought  to  prove  ( 1 )  that  there  is  nothing ; 
(2)  that  even  if  there  were  anything,  we  could  not  know 
it;  (3)  that  even  if  we  could  know  it,  we  could  not  com- 
municate our  knowledge  to  one  another. 

17.  While  Zeno  and  Melissus  were  Eleatics  and  thus 
in  a  sense  belonged  to  the  cosmological  tradition,  against 
which  Sophistry  was  a  protest,  yet  they  themselves  uncon- 
sciously instigated  the  reaction  by  destroying  the  experi- 
ential foundations  on  which  cosmology  was  built.  There 
could  be  no  real  knowledge  of  the  world  without  sense 
experience  and  motion,  both  of  which  were  attacked  by 
the  Eleatics.  And  furthermore,  their  arguments  about  what 
is  and  what  is  not,  through  the  ambiguity  of  the  verb  "to 
be,"  could  easily  be  shifted  so  as  to  give  comfort  to  their 
enemies,  as  Gorgias  showed  when  he  asserted  there  is 


33  Gk.  Phil.,  1,  p.  117. 

34  cf.  above,  p.  68. 


r.  131 i 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

nothing,  and  Leucippus  in  his  doctrine  that  what  is  not 
(empty  space)  is.  It  is  therefore  not  surprising  to  find  that 
the  extreme  of  opposition  to  cosmological  science,  main- 
tained by  the  Sophist  Gorgias,  was  based  on  the  arguments 
of  the  younger  Eleatics,  Zeno  and  Melissus. 


CHAPTER  IX 

PHILOLAUS 

l.  Within  the  Pythagorean  Order  and  in  philosophical 
circles  touched  by  its  influence  during  this  period,  there 
seems  to  have  been  an  important  and  fruitful  development 
of  the  basic  concepts  of  science,  although  there  was  no 
further  actual  investigation  of  nature.  The  Pythagoreans 
were  under  the  necessity  of  modifying  and  extending  their 
traditional  theories  in  consequence  of  two  recent  features 
in  philosophy.  Empedocles  had  concentrated  the  attention 
of  cosmologists  on  the  problems  of  terrestrial  processes, 
such  as  are  observable  in  plants  and  animals,  and  by  his 
doctrine  of  elements  had  offered  an  explanation  of  the 
phenomena  of  growth  and  death.  It  was  impossible  for 
subsequent  philosophers  to  ignore  such  questions  or  con- 
tent themselves  any  longer  in  the  main  with  theories  about 
the  creation  and  movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies.  The 
Pythagoreans  had  to  meet  this  situation  and  to  put  for- 
ward some  sort  of  an  explanation  of  earthly  objects 
and  processes.  In  the  second  place,  the  new  humanistic 
tendency  had  as  its  point  of  departure  a  dissatisfaction 
with  natural  science,  owing  to  the  alleged  impossibility 
of  discovering  any  definite  and  dependable  information 
about  the  physical  world.  The  Sophists  simply  accepted 
this  prevalent  incredulity  and  turned  their  backs  on  na- 
ture, or  tried  to,  by  elaborating  a  structure  whose  essence 
was  vofAos  (human  convention)  as  contrasted  with  <£vcri9. 

C   133  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

But  it  was  necessary  for  the  Pythagoreans,  as  philosophers, 
to  combat  the  sceptical  attitude,  if  their  ancient  system 
was  to  stand  the  test  of  contemporary  criticism ;  they  had 
to  justify  the  process  of  knowledge  and  so  establish  the 
possibility  of  their  scientific  concepts. 

2.  The  former  of  these  changes,  concerned  with  the  ex- 
planation of  terrestrial  phenomena,  was  bound  up  with  the 
whole  subject  of  material  substrates.  We  have  seen  reason 
to  suppose  that  Pythagoras  believed  the  world  was 
brought  into  being  by  the  breaking  up  of  an  original  mass 
through  the  introduction  of  air  acting  as  a  void.1  But  Em- 
pedocles  had  demonstrated  that  air  was  not  a  void  which 
could  separate  things;  it  was  a  corporeal  element,  like  fire. 
Accordingly,  it  was  necessary  for  the  Pythagoreans  to 
revise  their  theories  of  the  materials  out  of  which,  and  the 
process  by  which,  the  different  objects  of  the  world  were 
created.  With  regard  to  the  materials,  Philolaus,  who 
seems  to  have  been  the  most  prominent  thinker  in  the 
Order  at  the  time,  simply  accepted  the  four  Empedoclean 
elements  but  apparently  made  very  little  use  of  them  in 
his  system.2  With  regard  to  the  process,  he  substituted 
for  the  simple  and  general  Empedoclean  notion  of  mixture 
the  special  activity  of  harmonizing,  probably  because  this 
was  in  line  with  traditional  Pythagorean  cosmology  and 
emphasized  the  idea  of  order.  He  held  that  the  whole 
world  and  the  objects  in  it3  had  been  "fitted  together"  or 

1  See  above,  p.  40. 

2  Philolaus,  frag.  12,  DFV,  p.  244;  cf.  also  his  physiology,  which  pre- 
supposes the  four  elements  identified  with  the  old  opposites,  hot,  cold, 
moist,  dry,  Menon,  Anon.  Lond.,  18.  8,  DFV,  p.  238.  I  have  given  a  transla- 
tion of  the  fragments  and  briefly  discussed  their  authenticity  in  the 
Appendix. 

3  Philolaus  carefully  and  specifically  includes  the  objects  in  the  world, 
rhivavTcp,  frags.  1  and  2,  DFV,  pp.  239,  240.  The  phrase  is  an  indication  of 
the  new  interest  in  the  detail  of  nature,  which  began  with  Empedocles. 

C  134  3 


PHILOLAUS 

"shut  up  together"  by  the  force  of  Harmony.  Creation  of 
separate  things  is  thus  a  harmonizing.4 

The  author  does  not  relate  in  detail  the  condition  of 
things  before  Harmony  started  to  produce  individual  ob- 
jects; but  he  speaks  of  a  sphere  with  the  four  elements  in 
it,  and  a  fifth  body  which  he  calls  "the  hull  of  the  sphere" 
but  which  he  does  not  further  define.5  This  expression, 
however,  suggests  Empedocles'  notion  of  the  sphere 
"bound  in  the  close  covering  of  Harmony"  ;6  and  it  prob- 
ably signifies  the  original  mass  of  the  world  held  intact 
by  an  all-pervasive  and  comprehensive  force,  comparable 
to  Empedocles'  sphere  with  Love  thoroughly  diffused  in 
it.  We  shall  see  later  that  Philolaus  believed  that  the  form 
of  an  individual  object  was  a  pattern  impressed  upon  a 
certain  quantity  of  matter,  and  the  object  preserved  its 
identity  as  long  as  the  form  held  the  matter  within  it.  In 
somewhat  the  same  way,  the  world  is  conceived  as  a  con- 
tent held  together  by  a  peripheral  casing  like  the  hull 
of  a  ship. 

3.  The  expressions  and  the  whole  theory  of  Philolaus 
leave  no  room  for  doubt  that  the  process  of  creation  was 
regarded  as  a  progressive  one,  and  in  this  he  kept  to  the 
original  position  of  his  Order.  But  his  own  development  of 
the  idea  of  Harmony  entailed  one  curious  aberration  from 
the  Master's  doctrine.  Pythagoras,  if  our  surmises  were 
correct,  must  have  held  that  creation  or  the  separation  of 
the  world  into  parts  by  the  inhalation  of  air  started  at  the 
outside  of  the  mass  and  worked  inward.  Philolaus,  believ- 
ing that  creation  was  not  a  separation  but  a  fitting  to- 

4  The  Greek  verbs  are  ap^xOvj^vvapfiix^Vy^vyKeKXelffdai..  In  frag.  7,  kpiwaStv 
is  equivalent  to  "created." 

6  frag.  12,  DFV,  p.  244;  for  the  reading,  Gundermann  in  Rhein.  Mus., 
1904,  p.  145 ;  for  the  meaning,  Burnet,  p.  294.  One  should  also  notice  Aris- 
totle's conception  of  r6iros,pkys.,  IV,  209  b  1-4. 

6  Emped.,  frag.  27. 

C  135  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

gether,  asserted  that  the  process  commenced  at  the  center 
of  the  mass  and  worked  outward.7  He  is  no  doubt  careful 
to  state  this  position  so  explicitly  just  because  it  signalized 
his  departure  from  the  older  philosophy. 

This  change,  however,  was  made  less  violent  because 
Philolaus  and  apparently  his  followers  likewise  did  not 
regard  it  as  affecting  their  fundamental  concepts.  We  get 
a  hint  of  this  when  Plato  in  the  Timaeus  (48  b)  makes 
the  Pythagorean  assert  that  the  four  elements  were  not 
the  ultimate  principles  of  the  world;  that,  so  far  from 
being  letters,  they  were  not  even  syllables  in  the  syntax 
of  the  cosmos.  And  this  interpretation  is  confirmed  by  the 
fragments  of  Philolaus,  in  which  earth,  air,  jire,  and  water 
play  but  a  minor  part.  We  are  there  told  that  the  world 
and  its  objects  have  been  fitted  together  out  of  limits  and 
unlimiteds,  or  limiting  and  non-limiting  things,  that  each 
thing  in  the  world  must  be  either  a  limit,  an  unlimited,  or 
a  combination  of  the  two,  and  that  if  everything  were  un- 
limited, nothing  could  be  known.8  It  is  then  said  that 
number  is  what  makes  things  knowable;  number  is  sub- 
divided into  odd,  even,  and  a  mixture  of  these,9  but  there 
is  no  identification  of  limit  and  unlimited  with  odd  and 
even,  and  we  must  suppose  that  this  idea  was  a  later  phase 
of  the  number  doctrine.10  Indeed,  it  follows  from  the  pas- 
sages of  Philolaus  just  summarized  that  number  is  to  be 
connected  solely  with  limit,  since  it  is  number  or  limit 
which  makes  things  knowable. 

4.  Doubtless  it  was  by  means  of  this  idea  of  number  that 
the  author  was  endeavoring  to  withstand  the  prevailing 
sceptical  attitude  toward  science,  and  we  must  try  to 

7  frag.  7,  DFV,  p.  242;  frag.  17,  DFV,  p.  246. 

8  frags.  1,  2,  3,  DFV,  pp.  239,  240. 

9  frags.  4,  5,  ibid. 

10  Arist.,  Met.,  I,  986  a  17 ;  Phys.,  Ill,  203  a  10. 


PHILOLAUS 

understand  it  in  order  to  gain  some  appreciation  of  what 
he  meant  by  limit.  In  one  place  he  says  that  you  can 
observe  the  nature  of  number  not  only  in  divine  things  but 
also  in  human  deeds  and  words,  in  the  handicrafts  and 
in  music.11  The  last  named  instance  is  the  only  one  which 
he  treats  of  with  any  degree  of  fulness,  and  he  does  so 
in  order  to  explain,  not  number,  but  musical  harmony. 
However,  if  we  consider  his  description  with  the  idea  of 
deriving  from  it  some  understanding  of  his  conception 
of  number,  it  appears  that  numbers  are  employed  to 
express  the  intervals  between  the  fixed  notes;  and  we  are 
thus  led  to  the  general  notion  that  numbers  make  things 
known  by  giving  their  measure.  Much  the  same  signifi- 
cance may  be  posited  for  the  application  of  numbers  to 
the  exact  handicrafts,  of  which  the  author  speaks.  In 
architecture,  for  example,  which  was  in  its  most  flourish- 
ing and  glorious  period  in  Greece  during  the  lifetime  of 
Philolaus,  building  plans  which  expressed  ideals  of  match- 
less grace  involved  arithmetical  and  geometrical  formulae, 
and  the  actual  dressing  of  the  raw  material  depended  upon 
the  observance  of  numerical  specifications.  "Numerical 
laws,"  says  M.  Choisy,  "determine  not  only  the  general 
disposition  of  the  orders;  they  are  found  in  every  detail 
of  decoration ;  they  regulate  even  the  outline  of  the  mould- 
ings."12 And  the  same  eminent  authority  believes  that 
these  numerical  laws  were  developed  under  the  guidance 
of  Pythagorean  doctrines.  Such  practices  might  plausibly 
yield  the  notion  that  what  is  measurable  is  knowable  and 
that  number,  which  expresses  measurement,  makes  things 
known. 

If  then  number  in  this  function  is  the  same  as  limit, 

^DFV,  frag.  11,  p.  243. 

12  Choisy,  Hist,  de  I'Arch.,  I,  pp.  390,  391,  399. 

C  137  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

we  are  to  understand  that  a  limited  thing  is  knowable 
because  it  is  mensurable,  and  we  may  guess  that  limit  con- 
tains the  notions  of  definite  size  and  shape.  This  supposi- 
tion is  strengthened  by  what  seems  to  me  the  only  possible 
and  intelligible  interpretation  of  the  sole  fragment  of  the 
author  which  deals  with  limits.13  Philolaus  is  attempting 
to  show  that  the  whole  world  is  harmonized  out  of  limits, 
unlimiteds,  and  combinations  of  the  two;  and  he  illus- 
trates his  thesis  by  fields  of  land.  "Some  of  them,  being 
limits,  limit;  and  others,  (formed)  of  limits  and  un- 
limiteds, limit  and  do  not  limit;  while  still  others, 
(formed)  of  unlimiteds,  will  prove  to  be  unlimited."  A 
more  obscure  and  Pythagorean  illustration  could  scarcely 
be  imagined.  But  Philolaus  must  mean  peripheral  lines  by 
limits  here,14  and  a  field  formed  by  limits  would  thus 
be  one  marked  by  regular  boundaries.  What  then  would  an 
unlimited  field  be?  It  is  unlikely  that  the  phrase  refers  to 
land  actually  unlimited  in  extent,  as  the  size  and  configu- 
ration of  Greece  and  Italy  were  too  well  known  to  permit 
such  an  absurdity.  Nor  do  I  believe  the  author  was  think- 
ing of  unsettled  countries  on  the  border  of  civilization, 
whose  boundaries  were  unknown  or  indefinite;  the  Greek 
words  imply  used  lands.15  But  if  one  remembers  the  moun- 
tainous nature  of  Greece  and  Italy  and  the  large  grazing 
industry  in  those  countries,  it  will  seem  quite  possible  that 
by  "fields  of  unlimiteds"  Philolaus  meant  mountain  pas- 
tures which  had  no  regular  or  fixed  boundary  lines.  Simi- 

13  frag.  2,  DFV,  p.  240. 

14  Diels  translates  simply  "Linien,"  ibid. 

15  £v  rots  epyots,  which  Diels  translates  "an  den  Aekern."  The  phrase 
may,  however,  have  an  implication  of  surveying;  cf.  Xen.,  Mem.,  IV,  7,  2, 
ep-yov  &TTodet£a<Tdai,  where  Zpyov  must  mean  "agri  mensuram"  and  Dindorf 
says :  "Cogita  agri  portionem  dividendi  inter  plures  mensura  definiendam." 
if  this  significance  is  applied  to  the  words  of  Philolaus,  a  limit  would  be  a 
surveyor's  boundary  line. 

C  138: 


PHILOLAUS 

larly  fields  formed  from  limits  and  unlimiteds  would  be 
those  whose  sides  were  partly  definite  and  partly  undefined 
where  they  extended  to  irregular  features  of  the  land- 
scape. On  this  interpretation,  the  conception  of  limit  im- 
plied regularity  of  form  as  well  as  measurable  extent.  This 
duality  of  meaning  will  perhaps  appear  the  more  natural 
if  we  consider  the  practical  difficulties  in  determining  the 
size  of  an  object  with  irregular  outlines. 

5.  We  are  now  in  a  position  to  put  together  the  two  con- 
stitutive characteristics  of  the  created  world,  the  four  ele- 
ments on  the  one  hand,  and  the  limiting  and  unlimited 
feature  on  the  other.  Objects  are  formed  by  shutting  up 
together  some  of  the  four  elemental  substances  of  nature ; 
this  combination  is  the  inner  reality  or  essence  (icrrco)  of 
a  thing,  and  it  cannot  be  known,  probably  just  because 
the  components  are  so  fused  that  each  has  no  independent 
form  and  therefore  cannot  be  measured  or  calculated.  But 
without  this  substantive  being,  nothing  can  come  into 
existence  as  a  distinct  object.16  Besides  its  material  con- 
stitution, each  thing  has  a  form,  shape,  or  size,  and  when 
this  feature  of  it  is  reduced  to  measurement,  the  thing  can 
be  known  and  distinguished  from  other  things.17  Not  all 
things  have  this  property,  but  everything  which  is  known 
has  it;  in  the  words  of  Philolaus,  "all  things  that  are 

16  I  have  attempted  to  explain  the  author's  meaning  on  this  point  in  a 
note  on  Philolaus,  frag.  6,  Classical  Philology  for  October  1922. 

17  The  appropriateness  of  this  position  should  not  be  overlooked,  (l)  It 
utilized  the  Pythagorean  interest  in  mathematics.  (2)  It  was  in  line  with, 
and  a  great  advance  over,  the  scientific  tendencies  of  the  day,  especially 
in  the  West,  with  which  Philolaus  was  in  touch  through  his  medical  asso- 
ciations. (3)  It  was  the  strongest  refutation  of  sensationalism  and  scepti- 
cism about  natural  science,  and  was  employed  as  such  by  Plato,  Rep., 
X  602 :  Soc. — "And  the  arts  of  measuring  and  numbering  and  weighing 
come  to  the  rescue  of  the  human  understanding — there  is  the  beauty  of 
them — and  the  apparent  greater  or  less,  or  more  or  heavier,  no  longer  have 
the  mastery  over  us,  but  give  way  before  calculation  and  measure  and 
weight?,"  Glaucon — "Most  true."  (Trans.  Jowett.)  cf.  Tim.,  87  c  4. 

C  139  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

known  have  number,"  that  is,  are  capable  of  numerical 
specification.  It  will  be  seen  at  once  that  the  limit  of  a 
thing  is  a  part  of  that  thing,  and  this  leads  us  to  the 
discovery  that  in  Philolaus  there  is  no  such  thing  as  Limit 
or  Unlimited  regarded  as  ultimate  cosmological  sub- 
stances, but  only  limiting  and  unlimited  things.  Philolaus 
thus  used  the  words  and  perhaps  the  general  idea  of  his 
Master;  but  what  Pythagoras  had  posited  for  the  world 
and  its  celestial  bodies,  his  follower  by  a  clever  shift  ap- 
plied to  individual  objects  of  nature.  Moreover  Limit  has 
been  transformed,  not  into  limited,  but  into  limiting 
things;  it  is  as  if  the  form  of  an  object  were  conceived 
of  as  actively  restraining  its  substance,  and  keeping  it 
within  a  certain  individual  contour,  while  unlimited  ob- 
jects had  no  such  principle  in  them  and  were  metaphysi- 
cally dead. 

6.  This  peculiar  notion  cannot  be  studied  directly  in  the 
fragments  of  the  author  because  nothing  is  said  about 
it;  it  is  only  through  the  cognate  ideas  of  Number  and 
Harmony  that  we  get  any  clue  to  the  real  meaning  of 
limits.  Now  the  figure  of  Harmony  stands  as  the  creative 
force  in  the  world,  and  the  verb  "harmonize"  is  used  to 
express  the  author's  specific  notion  of  the  action  involved 
in  creation.18  Further  light  is  thrown  on  the  subject  by  the 
remarks  of  Simmias,  a  Pythagorean  and  a  former  disciple 
of  Philolaus,  as  given  in  Plato's  Dialogue,  the  Pkaedo.19 
The  question  which  is  being  discussed  is  the  nature  of  soul 
and  its  relation  to  the  body.  Simmias  advances  the  theory 
that  the  body  is  formed  of  the  four  traditional  opposites, 
and  that  the  soul  is  the  principle  according  to  which  they 

18  frags,  l,  2,  6,  7,  DFV,  pp.  239-41. 

19  pp.  85  e-86  d. 

C    HO    3 


PHILOLAUS 

are  fitted  together  and  harmonized  into  an  entity.20  The 
physiological  side  of  this  doctrine  is  the  same  as  that 
ascribed  to  Philolaus  in  Menon's  Iatrika,  and  in  view  of 
the  close  correspondence  between  microcosm  and  macro- 
cosm which  runs  through  all  Greek  cosmology,  we  are 
justified,  I  believe,  in  employing  Simmias'  idea  of  soul 
as  harmony  to  explain  the  Harmony  of  the  world  as  set 
forth  in  the  fragments.  On  this  basis,  Harmony  is  the 
active  principle  in  nature,  the  law  or  proportion  according 
to  which  the  four  substantial  elements  are  mixed.21  It  ex- 
presses the  idea  of  an  active  nature,  particularizing  the 
world  into  separate  objects  by  mixing  various  ultimate 
elements  according  to  numerical  specifications,  so  that 
it  has  become  an  orderly,  regular  cosmos.  It  would  exist 
as  soul  in  human  beings,  just  as  in  the  system  of  Anaxa- 
goras  there  were  portions  of  Nous  in  animate  objects;  and 
it  might  thus  be  called  the  soul  of  the  world. 

Now  by  the  side  of  this  world  Harmony,  there  is  in  the 
fragments  the  figure  of  Number  itself,  whose  activity  can 
best  be  seen  in  the  decad,  which  shows  forth  its  omnipotent 
and  divine  regulative  force.22  It  is  this  Number  which  in 
the  soul  harmonizes  all  knowable  objects  in  perception 
and  relates  them  to  one  another.  The  expression  "Number 
harmonizes"  would  indicate  to  one  who  is  conversant  with 
the  modes  of  thought  and  speech  of  the  period  that  Num- 
ber is  Harmony  in  one  of  its  functions;  and  the  whole 

20  In  the  doctrine  sketched  by  Simmias,  there  is  no  express  statement  that 
the  soul  as  harmony  was  an  active  principle ;  but  Cebes,  the  other  Pytha- 
gorean, has  a  theory  in  which  the  soul  is  plainly  the  active  causal  principle 
in  the  body,  and  this  shows  that  it  was  at  least  possible  for  Pythagoreans 
to  believe  in  such  a  principle.  The  truth  is  that  such  theories,  as  Simmias  is 
made  to  admit  (92  d  l),  were  only  "specious  analogies,"  and  they  could  be 
developed  along  inconsistent  lines. 

21  cf.  also  frag.  6,  DFV,  p.  241,  1.  2,  where  0i5«rts  and  apfwvla  are  used 
side  by  side. 

22  frag.  11,  DFV,  p.  243. 

C  Hi  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

phrase  taken  together  with  the  words  of  Simmias  in  the 
Phaedo  seems  to  yield  the  idea  that  Number,  Harmony, 
and  soul  in  the  system  of  Philolaus  were  various  aspects 
of  one  and  the  same  principle.  This  then  is  the  human 
manifestation  of  that  world-principle  to  which  Aristotle 
alludes,  when  he  says  that  the  Pythagoreans  made  the 
whole  world  harmony  and  number.23  It  is  now  easier  to 
understand  Philolaus'  statement  that  Number  gives  bodily 
existence  to  things  and  distinguishes  them  mentally.24 
Number  is  also  Harmony  in  one  of  its  activities,  a  func- 
tion of  the  prime  cause  which  has  given  separate  corporeal 
entity  to  objects  by  mixing  the  elements  and  impressing 
forms  or  measurable  limits  on  the  mixtures,  so  that  each 
object  can  be  distinguished  from  all  others.  The  assign- 
ment of  this  objective  power  to  Number'  and  especially 
to  the  decad  will  not  appear  unintelligible  if  we  remember 
the  previous  interpretation  of  Pythagoras ;  indeed  it  would 
seem  that  Philolaus  is  simply  following  the  traditional 
doctrine  of  his  Order  on  this  point.25 

If,  then,  Number  is  an  attribute  of  Harmony  and  speci- 
fically the  cause  of  the  distinguishing  forms  of  things,  and 
if  furthermore  these  forms  are  in  fact  numerically  calcu- 
lable limits,  it  must  follow  that  the  author  meant  to 
ascribe  the  limiting  function  to  Harmony.  We  have  there- 
fore the  cause  of  motion  or  creation,  in  which  the  principle 
of  Limit  inheres,  and  on  the  other  hand  there  are  the  ob- 
jects of  the  world,  which  have  their  particular  limits.  Or 
we  can  put  it  in  this  way :  there  is  the  principle  of  Num- 
ber, which  is  one  aspect  of  Harmony,  and  there  are  all 
the  particular  numbers,  which  make  up  the  external  dis- 

23  Met.  I,  5,  986  a  3. 

2*frag.  11,  DFV,  p.  243,  11.  14,  15. 

25  See  above,  p.  40. 

C  142  ] 


PHILOLAUS 

tinguishing  features  of  things.  But  since  these  features 
were  the  effects  of  the  principle,  which  was  active,  they 
were  also  conceived  as  active;  and  hence  they  are  described 
as  limiting  the  objects  on  which  they  have  been  impressed. 
This  will  explain  why  Philolaus  does  not  speak  of  limited 
things,  but  only  of  things  which  have  limiting  outlines. 
Limit  was  an  active  principle  and  could  not  properly  be 
used  to  represent  a  state  of  being;  the  latter  was  expressed 
in  the  statement  that  things  have  number.  The  interesting 
point  to  observe  here  is  that,  although  Philolaus  had  a 
comparatively  advanced  and  scientific  concept  of  cause 
of  motion,  he  had  apparently  very  little  idea  of  the  rela- 
tion between  cause  and  effect,  for  he  portrays  the  limiting 
characteristics  of  objects  merely  as  miniatures  of  the  limit- 
ing principle,  the-implication  being  that  a  cause  works  by 
dividing  and  distributing  itself. 

7.  So  far  as  we  know,  Philolaus  did  not  raise  the  ques- 
tion, which  in  somewhat  altered  form  became  one  of  the 
chief  problems  of  Socrates  and  Plato,  whether  the  number- 
limits  were  parts  of  things  or  were  separate.  Aristotle, 
who  seems  to  have  been  badly  confused  by  the  different 
positions  taken  by  various  Pythagoreans,  says  in  one  place 
that  the  numbers  were  not  separate,  while  in  another  pas- 
sage he  implies  that  they  were  separate.26  Philolaus  says 
simply  that  knowable  things  have  number.  These  number- 
limits  are  certainly  part  of  any  object  considered  as  an 
entity,  indeed  they  are  the  constitutive  principle  in  the 
object.  But  on  the  contrary  they  do  not  appear  to  be  part 
of  the  object's  material  substance.  It  would  seem  therefore 
that,  in  this  conception  of  number-limits,  we  meet  with  a 
stage  of  thought  similar  to  that  represented  by  the  Nous  of 
Anaxagoras  and  the  Love  of  Empedocles;  for  all  these 

26  Met.,  XIV  3,  1090  a  21 ;  I,  6.  987  b  10. 

C  143  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

ideas  rest  on  the  distinction  of  some  active  principle  from 
the  material  things  in  which  it  works,  and  they  were  ob- 
viously attempts  to  grasp  the  notion  of  pure  force.  But 
they  remained  ambiguous  simply  because  the  authors 
could  not  go  all  the  way  to  an  appreciation  of  immaterial 
cause.  We  might  thus  say  that  Philolaus  seems  to  confuse 
soul  or  vital  principle  with  material  form;  and  this  con- 
fusion was  not  wholly  relieved  in  the  Socratic  develop- 
ment of  the  doctrine. 

If  our  account  of  Philolaus  is  correct,  we  must  hold  that 
Harmony  was  a  figure  similar  in  many  respects  to  the 
Nous  of  Anaxagoras.  It  was  not  simply  corporeal :  it  was 
a  force  which  acted  on  the  corporeal  elements  and  was  the 
cause  of  motion  in  them.  It  gave  order  and  regularity  to 
the  world  by  relating  and  distinguishing  its  different  ob- 
jects or  parts  in  one  intelligible  system.  It  was  apparently 
itself  endowed  with  limiting  activity,  which  was  in  some 
sense  cognitive,  and  it  certainly  had  this  in  its  microcosmic 
existence  as  soul  in  human  beings.  It  was  therefore  psy- 
chologically anthropomorphic,  like  the  first  principles  of 
other  philosophers  of  this  period.  It  was  furthermore,  in 
the  form  of  Number,  an  omnipotent  power,  the  source  and 
regulator  of  all  life  both  divine  and  human.27  It  was  thus 
what  other  thinkers  called  god,  but  the  Pythagorean  on 
account  of  his  religion  probably  did  not  openly  apply  this 
term  to  it. 

8.  We  must  now  notice  briefly  the  conception  of  order 
that  is  implied  in  the  fragments  of  Philolaus.  It  is  closely 
bound  up  with  the  notion  of  Harmony,  and  indeed  its 
fundamental  significance  appears  to  be  that  each  of  the 
various  objects  of  the  world  gains  its  entity  and  its  distin- 
guishable attributes  by  the  action  of  Harmony  or  Num- 

27  Philolaus,  frag.  11,  DFV,  p.  243,  11.  4-6. 

C  144  ] 


PHILOLAUS 

ber.28  If  we  analyze  this  idea  a  little  further,  we  seem  to 
find  ourselves  in  the  presence  of  that  old  supposition, 
implicit  in  the  first  Greek  systems  of  philosophy,  that 
whatever  regularity  there  is  in  the  world  must  be  due  to 
the  supremacy  of  one  divine  power.  But  there  is  in  Philo- 
laus  no  suggestion  that  the  world  is  generated  out  of  Har- 
mony, for  the  latter  is  a  force ;  nor  that  Harmony  exercises 
its  control  by  means  of  threatening  fiats  or  restraining 
commands,  such  as  were  the  rule  in  Heraclitus.  Nor, 
finally,  does  there  seem  to  be  any  trace  of  Necessity  either 
practical,  in  order  to  preserve  a  proper  balance  between 
the  opposites,  or  religious  and  mystical.  The  order  of  the 
world  is  simply  the  result  of  creation's  being  itself  a  pro- 
cess of  harmonizing,  and  the  implication  would  thus  be 
that  objects  are  harmoniously  related  to  one  another  be- 
cause they  were  all  created  in  the  same  process  and  regu- 
lated by  the  same  force.29  There  is  furthermore  the  sug- 
gestion that  Harmony  in  its  objective  manifestations  is 
always  capable  of  mathematical  formulation,  and  that 
therefore  the  relations  of  things  harmonized  are  suscep- 
tible of  numerical  description.30  This  is  the  idea  of  order, 

28  frag.  6,  DFV,  p.  241,  11.  2-14. 

29  In  this  special  sense,  it  is  true  to  say  that  Harmony  is  also  Necessity, 
cf.  Diog.  L.,  VIII,  85,  RP  67  B. 

30  The  relation  of  Unlimiteds  to  Harmony  is  a  difficult  problem.  They 
were  certainly  not  susceptible  of  numerical  description  and  therefore 
could  not  be  known  scientifically.  Yet  quite  as  certainly  they  entered  into 
the  composition  of  the  world,  for  Philolaus  says  that  the  ordered  universe 
is  fitted  together  from  limiting  and  unlimited  things.  According  to  frag.  6, 
the  t<rT<J>  or  material  substance  of  both  limiting  and  unlimited  things  is 
unknowable  and  therefore  unlimited.  Following  this  hint,  we  might  sup- 
pose that  unlimiteds  were  simply  substances  which  had  no  measurable 
form,  or  which  had  not  been  completely  harmonized.  In  this  case,  the 
action  of  Harmony  would  be  twofold — fitting  limits  to  pieces  of  sub- 
stance, and  fitting  these  limited  things  together  with  unlimited  portions 
of  substance.  Then  is  the  action  of  Harmony  a  process  which  is  not  yet 
completed1?  Philolaus  may  have  treated  these  points  in  the  lost  parts  of 
his  book,  but  on  the  other  hand,  all  that  we  know  of  Pythagoreanism  leads 
us  to  expect  incomplete  analogies  of  this  sort. 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

I  suppose,  which  underlies  the  application  of  harmonic 
intervals  to  the  celestial  bodies.31  Indeed  this  whole  con- 
cept gives  the  impression  of  being  founded  on  mathemat- 
ical analogy  rather  than  on  physical  investigation;  and 
this  consists  with  all  that  we  know  about  the  labors  of  the 
Order,  which  were  not  in  any  true  sense  concerned  with 
detailed  observation  of  nature.  The  notion  of  order  there- 
fore appears,  when  applied  to  the  world  at  large,  as  a 
metaphysical  postulate  of  regularity  rather  than  a  scien- 
tific theory  of  causation. 

We  should  also  remember  that  the  harmonious  inter- 
relation of  things  is  an  epistemological,  as  well  as  an 
ontological  circumstance ;  that  is,  it  exists  in  cognition  and 
in  Nature.  "Harmony,"  says  Philolaus,  "is  a  union  of 
things  mixed  from  many  parts,  and  an  agreement  of 
variously  minded  beings."32  We  may  infer,  I  think,  that 
this  agreement  was  an  attribute  of  creative  Harmony, 
which  was  also  cognitive ;  and  thus  we  are  brought  to  the 
notion  that  it  was  the  plan  or  condition  under  which  the 
world  was  developed.  There  is  thus  latent  in  it  the  sug- 
gestion that  the  orderly  activity  of  nature  is  the  expression 
of  the  ordered  design  of  the  supreme  force  which  regu- 
lates the  world.  In  this  detail  again,  Philolaus  is  compar- 
able to  Anaxagoras,  and  we  must  believe  that  they  were 
both  thinking  under  the  influence  of  the  new  humanistic 
point  of  view. 

9.  Before  leaving  Philolaus,  let  us  pause  to  inquire  what 
he  thought  the  relation  of  man  should  be  to  the  supreme 
power  of  the  world.  In  the  Phaedo  (61  e  7-9),  Cebes  tells 

81  In  Mr.  Burnet's  conjecture,  pp.  122,  351. 

32  frag.  10,  DFV,  p.  242.  cf.  frag.  11,  ibid.,  p.  243,  11.  8-16,  with  frag.  6, 
ibid.,  p.  241,  11.  9,  10;  there  is  virtually  a  correspondence  between  knowl- 
edge and  Being,  which  is  of  course  characteristic  of  Greek  philosophy, 
though  it  was  not  expressed  in  those  terms  before  Plato. 

C  H6  3 


PHILOLAUS 

Socrates  he  has  heard  Philolaus  say  that  it  is  not  right 
for  a  philosopher  to  commit  suicide;  but  Cebes  professes 
ignorance  of  the  reason  for  this  idea  of  his  former  Mas- 
ter's. These  remarks  are  an  historical  touch  which  it  does 
not  seem  reasonable  to  suppose  Plato  would  have  invented, 
and  we  are,  I  believe,  justified  in  accepting  them  as  evi- 
dence that  Philolaus  did  hold  it  wrong  for  a  seeker  after 
truth  to  take  his  own  life.  But  we  get  no  further  light 
from  Plato  on  this  Pythagorean  belief,  as  Socrates  pro- 
ceeds to  develop  his  own  ideas  on  the  subject;  these  may 
well  have  been  Pythagorean  in  origin,33  but  we  cannot  be 
certain  about  the  different  elements  in  the  doctrine,  as  it 
is  presented  to  us  in  the  dialogue.  There  is,  however,  a 
fragment  of  Philolaus  which  gives  the  old  Pythagorean 
view  that  the  soul  has  been  joined  to  the  body  for  the 
purpose  of  punishment  and  is,  as  it  were,  entombed  in  the 
flesh.34  From  other  sources  we  know  the  rest  of  this  doc- 
trine, which  is  Orphic  as  well  as  Pythagorean,  and  it  is 
not  difficult  to  guess  that  Philolaus'  objection  to  the  sui- 
cide of  a  philosopher  was  that  the  latter  would  thereby 
interrupt  his  purification  in  the  flesh,  from  which  he  should 
only  be  released  by  god  at  the  proper  time.  Now  this  im- 
plies that  philosophy  was  purification — the  original  doc- 
trine of  the  Order — or,  in  other  words,  the  supreme  task 
in  this  life  was  the  quest  for  knowledge  of  the  principles 
which  govern  the  world.  We  are  thus  brought  to  the  his- 
torical point,  that  Philolaus  (and  probably  his  scientific 
contemporaries  in  the  Order),  while  dropping  the  primi- 
tive taboo  and  the  weird  practices  that  were  characteristic 

33  cf.  Phaed.,  61  d  9,  10. 

34  frag.  14,  DFV,  p.  245.  cf.  Plato,  Gorg.,  493  a  8,  where  the  "Italian"  may 
with  some  plausibility  be  identified  with  Philolaus. 

I  H7  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

of  the  earliest  Pythagoreanism,  still  maintained  the  pure 
religious  mysticism.85 

10.  There  is  left  the  question  whether  the  god  of  religion, 
to  join  whom  was  the  goal  of  the  mystic  and  the  end  of  all 
earthly  purification,  was  identified  in  the  thought  of  Philo- 
laus  with  the  supreme  force  of  Number  or  Harmony, 
which  regulated  the  physical  world  and  formed  the  high- 
est concept  of  philosophy.  Now  there  is  nothing  specifically 
on  this  point  in  the  fragments  of  Philolaus  or  in  the  notices 
about  him,  which  may  be  considered  authoritative.  But 
we  have  seen  reason  to  believe  that  all  the  other  presocratic 
philosophers,  of  whose  thought  on  this  matter  there  re- 
mains any  evidence,  held  that  the  god  of  science  was  also 
the  god  of  religion;  or  at  least  that  there  was  no  other 
supreme  god.  We  are  thus  predisposed  to  believe  the  same 
of  the  Pythagoreans.  Moreover  there  is  a  good  explanation 
for  the  absence  on  any  definite  information  on  this  point; 
the  Order  was  a  mystical  society,  similar  in  this  respect 
to  the  Orphic  fraternities,  and  its  members  were  bound 
to  preserve  silence  on  the  holy  secrets  to  which  they  were 
admitted.36  But  it  is  entirely  unnatural  to  suppose,  as 
some  authorities  have  done,  that  these  arcana  were  the 
scientific  theories  of  the  Founder  and  his  followers;  and 
the  idea  is  amply  disproved  by  the  open  teaching  and  the 
published  books  of  later  members.  What  any  such  mystic 
brotherhood  jealously  guarded  was  its  god  and  its  method 
of  reaching  him ;  and  we  may  suppose  this  was  as  true  of 
the  Pythagoreans  as  of  the  initiates  in  the  Eleusinian 

35  cf.  Burnet,  p.  321.  In  Gk.  Phil.,  p.  87,  the  same  author  maintains  that 
"the  religious  side"  of  Pythagoreanism  was  dropped.  This  seems  much  too 
broad  a  statement.  Mr.  Burnet  does  not  accept  the  fragments  of  Philolaus, 
but  even  so,  the  remarks  of  Cebes  and  of  Socrates  in  the  Phaedo  show  that 
Philolaus  had  kept  some  of  the  original  religious  doctrine  of  purification. 

36  cf.  Aristoxenus,  ap.  Diog.  L.,  VIII,  15  RP  55  A;  Porphyr.,  Vit.  Pytk., 
19. 

C  h8  3 


PHILOLAUS 

rites,  for  example.  Only  the  Pythagorean  method  of  reach- 
ing god  by  means  of  philosophical  study,  involving  as  it 
did  no  temporary  withdrawals  from  ordinary  existence 
and  no  intricate  ceremonies,  but  consisting  rather  of  a 
whole  life  of  devotion,  was  not  a  secret  and  could  hardly 
have  been  rendered  one.  And  moreover  the  scientific  and 
cosmological  doctrines  of  the  School  were  incapable  of 
elucidation,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  case  of  Philolaus,  with- 
out reference  to  a  supreme  physical  power,  which  in  pre- 
socratic  thought  was  universally  held  to  be  god.  So  that  on 
the  philosophical  side,  even  the  Pythagorean  god  came  to 
be  known  outside  the  Order,  though  that  apparently  did 
not  take  place  until  after  the  death  of  the  Founder;  and 
therefore  it  was  only  the  religious  god  that  remained 
always  a  secret  possession  of  the  members  of  the  society. 

Now  there  is  one  circumstance  which  in  my  view  makes 
it  probable  that  this  religious  god  was  the  same  figure 
essentially  as  the  cosmological  source  of  motion.  From  the 
very  beginning,  the  Pythagoreans  devoted  themselves  to 
scientific  and  cosmological  inquiry,  and  we  have  been  led 
to  believe  that  they  regarded  this  as  a  means  of  purifica- 
tion, which  would  eventually  bring  them  to  god.  What 
was  the  reason  or  the  fancy  which  prompted  them  to  think 
that  the  study  of  nature  could  serve  as  a  method  of  reach- 
ing the  god  whom  they  adored4?  or,  in  other  words,  how 
could  a  philosophico-scientific  occupation  be  utilized  for 
a  religious  purpose?  I  can  imagine  no  satisfactory  answer 
to  this  question  unless  it  be  that  such  inquiry  was  regarded 
as  necessitating  acquaintance  with  the  laws  by  which  their 
religious  god  regulated  the  world.  If  cosmological  specu- 
lation was  in  reality  a  way  of  knowing  the  god  whom  they 
worshipped  in  secret,  they  might  with  reason  devote  a 
whole  life  to  the  contemplation  and  investigation  of  his 

C  H9  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

works.  But  there  would  not  be  the  slightest  use  in  consider- 
ing nature's  god,  if  he  were  not  at  the  same  time  the 
divinity  for  whom  they  undertook  their  purification.  I 
believe  therefore  that  the  whole  notion  of  philosophical 
purification  with  all  its  allied  doctrines  must  finally  rest 
on  the  concept  of  a  prime  mover  who  was  also  the  supreme 
religious  figure.  For  this  reason  it  is  possible  to  accept 
some  of  the  fragments  of  Philolaus  that  have  appeared 
doubtful  or  spurious,  and  particularly  the  reference  to  a 
god  who  is  "guide  and  ruler  of  all,  one,  eternal,  single, 
immovable,  like  himself  and  different  from  all  else."37 

37  DFV,  p.  247.  The  reference  of  these  attributes  to  the  number  Seven 
may  be  an  inference  of  Lydus  or  original  with  Philolaus. 


CHAPTER  X 

SOCRATES 

1.  "The  Sophists  and  Socrates."  "Socrates  and  Plato." 
Such  were  typical  captions  under  which  one  of  the  greatest 
teachers  and  thinkers  of  the  world  received  treatment  in 
the  older  histories  of  philosophy.  Of  late  we  have  come 
to  believe  that  his  life  and  work  cannot  be  adequately 
appreciated  by  representing  him  chiefly  as  a  contemporary 
of  the  Sophists  or  the  antecedent  of  Plato.  He  was  both, 
to  be  sure;  but  his  points  of  similarity  with  the  Sophists 
yield  no  more  than  the  fundamental  humanistic  point  of 
view  from  which  they  all  started,  and  his  relation  to  Plato 
may  serve  to  explain  the  pupil  but  not  the  master. 

There  is  still,  and  there  always  will  be,  the  problem  as 
to  how  much  of  Plato  is  Socrates;  but  Zeller  and  more  re- 
cent scholars  have  accomplished  much  in  disengaging  the 
two  personalities  and  making  the  son  of  Sophroniscus  a 
man  of  flesh  and  blood — and  gray  matter.  There  is  also 
the  problem  of  reconciling  the  full-length  portraits  of 
Socrates,  drawn  by  Xenophon  and  Plato,  the  comic  sketch 
by  Aristophanes,  and  the  torso  by  Aristotle,  with  one  an- 
other. It  cannot  be  asserted  that  permanent  progress  has 
been  made  on  this  point,  although  it  seems  likely.  Recent 
critiques  of  Xenophon's  historical  reliability  in  his  Socratic 
works  have  tended  to  his  disparagement.  Professor  Burnet 
leads  the  van  of  those  who  hold  that  the  Platonic  Socrates, 
as  delineated  in  the  early  Dialogues,  was  essentially  the 

r.  151 1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

real  one.  This  method,  however,  involves  a  determination 
of  the  historical  order  of  the  Dialogues  and  the  extent  of 
Socratic  influence  in  them ;  and  on  both  these  points  there 
is  difference  of  opinion  in  the  party.  The  extraordinary 
complexity  of  the  whole  problem  naturally  leads  to  ex- 
treme views,  two  of  which  deserve  mention.  One  is  a 
development  of  Professor  Burnet's  view  to  the  conclusion 
that  all  of  the  Dialogues  of  Plato  are  Socratic,  with  the 
implication  that  Plato's  own  doctrines  were  developed 
orally  within  the  Academy  and  found  expression  only  in 
the  references  of  his  pupils.  The  other  view  is  that  the 
pictures  of  Socrates  given  by  Aristophanes,  Xenophon, 
and  Plato,  are  all  literary  fictions,  so  that  we  really  know 
nothing  about  the  historical  Socrates. 

Space  forbids  that  I  should  do  more  than  state  in  a 
summary  fashion  the  method  I  propose  to  follow,  but  that 
much  at  least  is  necessary.  I  have  no  new  theory  to  pro- 
pound, and  my  views  can  lay  claim  at  most  to  common 
sense,  in  whose  name  many  serene  stupidities  are  perpe- 
trated. I  shall  merely  attempt  to  utilize  all  the  informa- 
tion given  by  Aristophanes,  Xenophon,  Plato  and  Aris- 
totle, but  make  an  allowance  in  each  case  for  the  special 
circumstances  which  influenced  these  writers  respectively. 
The  comedian  was  obviously  composing  a  caricature,  which 
may  be  described  as  an  exaggerated  or  distorted  fact.  The 
fact  which  Aristophanes  caricatured  was  philosophy, 
which  had  lately  taken  root  in  Athens  in  the  persons  of 
certain  cosmologists,  Sophists,  and  Socrates;  and  the  pic- 
ture that  he  draws  is  a  jumble  of  their  doctrines  and 
practices,  but  so  far  as  it  represents  Socrates  at  all,  it  is 
the  Socrates  of  423  b.c.  and  not  of  399  b.c.  Xenophon's 
Memorabilia  was  written  some  time  after  Socrates  died, 
with  the  purpose  of  justifying  Socrates  against  the  charge 


SOCRATES 

of  irreligion;  and  the  statements  of  the  author  in  support 
of  this  thesis  must  be  examined  with  care  on  the  ground 
that  they  represent  a  subjective  interpretation  made  under 
a  strong  prejudice.  Furthermore  this  author's  writings  are 
of  very  unequal  value,  and  even  in  those  which  appear 
most  historical,  grave  inaccuracies  have  been  noted.  Al- 
though he  left  Athens  about  three  years  before  Socrates 
was  put  to  death,  he  had  known  Socrates  personally;  but 
he  probably  had  little  purely  philosophical  interest  then. 
Obviously  Plato  had  better  opportunities  for  knowing 
Socrates  than  any  other  of  these  writers,  and  he  also  was 
possessed  of  a  far  deeper  philosophic  acumen  than  Xeno- 
phon.  At  the  same  time,  like  Xenophon,  he  wrote  under  a 
strong  prejudice.  Furthermore  in  the  period  when  he  seems 
to  have  been  mainly  occupied  with  the  delineation  of 
Socrates,  he  was  developing  a  consummate  literary  and 
dramatic  art;  that  art  was  no  doubt  a  realistic  one,  but  it 
was  art  none  the  less,  and  the  genius  that  exercised  it  was 
not  the  genius  of  an  historian.  Aristotle  never  knew  Soc- 
rates and  did  not  come  to  Athens  until  more  than  thirty 
years  after  Socrates  died,  so  that  his  information  is  second- 
hand. Furthermore  he  was  not  interested  in  Socrates  the 
man,  but  in  Socrates  the  philosopher,  and  his  statements 
are  metaphysical  interpretations  of  Socratic  views.  So 
much  premised,  we  shall  proceed  to  use  the  evidence  from 
these  four  sources  as  intelligently  as  possible. 

2.  The  main  features  of  Socrates'  life  may  be  briefly 
told.  He  was  born  at  Athens  about  470  B.C.,  and  his 
family  were  probably  statuaries.  He  married  a  woman 
named  Xanthippe,  by  whom  he  had  three  sons,  and  who  is 
portrayed  by  later  writers  as  a  shrew.  He  was  of  an  odd 
appearance,  with  a  snub  nose,  protruding  eyes,  and  a 
shambling  gait.   From  boyhood  he  manifested  psychic 

C  153  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

peculiarities;  he  claimed  to  hear  an  inner  voice,  which  he 
regarded  as  a  divine  sign  to  guide  his  actions,  and  he  was 
also  subject  to  fits  of  abstraction,  so  that  he  would  stand 
for  hours,  lost  in  thought  and  completely  insensible  to 
what  went  on  around  him.  But  these  characteristics  did 
not  prevent  him  from  serving  as  a  soldier  and  fighting 
with  great  bravery. 

He  must  have  become  interested  in  philosophy  when 
he  was  quite  young,  and  is  said  to  have  studied  under 
Archelaus,  the  first  native  Athenian  philosopher.  He  soon 
gained  a  reputation  for  his  learning,  and  'gathered  about 
him  a  group  of  younger  enthusiasts.  All  this  must  have 
occurred  before  423  B.C.,  when  the  comic  poet  Aristo- 
phanes produced  the  play  called  the  Clouds,  in  which 
Socrates  appears  as  the  head  of  a  School.  One  of  his  pupils 
had  the  temerity  to  ask  the  Delphic  Oracle  whether  there 
was  anyone  wiser  than  Socrates,  and  the  priestess  replied 
in  the  negative.  This  response  was  treated  by  Socrates  with 
typical  humor  and  self-depreciation — a  strain  of  char- 
acter which  gained  him  a  reputation  for  irony — and  he 
maintained  that  what  the  oracle  meant  was  that  he  knew 
he  did  not  know  anything,  while  other  people,  professing 
wisdom,  skill,  or  expertness,  were  fundamentally  ignorant. 
The  subjects  on  which  he  found  even  the  most  respected 
of  his  fellow-citizens  ignorant  were  mainly  such  as  con- 
cerned the  meaning  of  human  life  as  a  whole  and  in  its 
various  organized  activities;  and  his  appreciation  of  this 
situation — a  city  whose  leaders  were  ignorantly  opinion- 
ated on  the  most  vital  questions — led  him  to  devote  the 
remainder  of  his  life  to  a  mission,  which  he  humorously 
described  as  convincing  people  of  their  ignorance,  but 
which  he  thought  of  seriously  as  urging  people  to  care  for 
their  souls. 

1  154: 


SOCRATES 

The  years  of  his  mission,  and  indeed  the  last  thirty 
years  of  his  life,  fell  within  the  period  of  the  Pelopon- 
nesian  War,  when  Athens  was  fighting  for  her  existence. 
Towards  the  close  of  this  difficult  time,  when  it  became 
apparent  that  Athens  was  losing  in  the  struggle  and  revo- 
lutions took  place  in  the  city,  Socrates,  by  his  independence 
and  his  refusal  to  adopt  what  he  considered  unj  ust  methods, 
offended  both  the  democratic  and  the  aristocratic  parties. 
In  399  b.c,  shortly  after  the  close  of  the  war,  Socrates 
was  accused  of  impiety,  on  the  ground  that  he  did  not  wor- 
ship the  city's  gods  but  introduced  new  divinities,  and  that 
he  corrupted  the  youth.  He  was  convicted  and  condemned 
to  death.  It  would  have  been  easy  for  him  to  escape  from 
prison,  where  he  was  forced  to  wait  for  some  time;  but 
this  he  steadfastly  refused  to  do,  and  he  died  according 
to  his  sentence,  by  drinking  poison. 

3.  In  considering  his  philosophy,  we  must  first  note 
that  one  effect  of  treating  him  by  himself,  independently 
of  the  Sophists  and  Plato,  has  been  to  emphasize  his  con- 
nection with  cosmology.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  this 
connection  alone  will  account  for  his  thought;  but  cer- 
tainly no  man's  consciousness  can  be  completely  abstracted 
from  the  influences  of  early  environment,  and  probably 
thoughts,  like  persons,  have  ancestors  as  well  as  relations. 
What  we  call  cosmology  was  the  philosophy  of  the  period 
when  Socrates  was  a  youth;  and  if  we  are  to  understand 
him,  it  will  not  do  to  limit  our  investigation  to  the  finished 
product  of  his  thought,  if  such  there  was.  We  must  take 
into  consideration  the  continuity  of  the  culture  to  which 
he  belonged.  Here  lies  the  trouble  with  the  usual  treatment 
of  Socrates  and  his  period ;  the  new  point  of  view,  the  new 
problems  and  methods  which  were  characteristic  of  the 
age  or  were  peculiar  to  him,  have  been  stressed  to  such  a 

t:  1553 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

degree  that  an  impassable  chasm  has  been  formed  between 
him  and  all  that  went  before.  It  is  as  if  the  presocratic  age 
laid  down  its  tools  forever  on  a  Saturday  evening,  and  on 
the  following  Monday  morning  an  entirely  different  group 
of  artisans  with  brand  new  implements  commenced  work. 
And  yet  such  a  view  is  frequently  implied  by  historians 
of  philosophy. 

On  the  other  hand,  let  us  recall  that  in  Socrates'  youth 
Parmenides  was  still  teaching,  and  that  on  one  occasion 
at  least  Socrates  conversed  with  the  founder  of  the  Eleatic 
school.1  Moreover  Empedocles,  Anaxagoras,  Zeno,  Melis- 
sus,  and  Archelaus  were  all  influencing  Greek  thought 
after  Socrates  was  twenty  years  old,  and  it  is  impossible 
to  believe  that  they  did  not  influence  Socrates.  Finally,  we 
have  acceptable  evidence  that  he  was  for  a  time  the  dis- 
ciple of  Archelaus.2 

Furthermore,  the  testimony  of  Plato,  Xenophon,  and 
Aristophanes  indicates  that  Socrates,  as  a  young  man  espe- 
cially, was  interested  in  the  problems  of  cosmology — the 
same  problems  that  were  dealt  with  by  the  philosophers 
mentioned  in  the  preceding  paragraph.3  In  the  Clouds,  he  is 
represented  as  dealing  both  with  natural  science  and  with 
sophistic  argumentation;4,  and  I  cannot  see  how  the  play 
would  have  had  any  point  unless  this  basis  of  it  was  true. 
It  is  important,  however,  to  remember  that  it  was  put  on 
the  stage  in  423  B.C.,  that  is,  over  twenty  years  before 
Socrates'  death,  and  it  therefore  portrays  the  philosopher 

1  Plato,  Parm.,  127  b.  The  historicity  of  this  meeting  is  maintained  by 
E.  Meyer,  Gesch.  d.  Alt.,  IV,  §  509  n.,  and  Burnet,  p.  192,  n.  3. 

2  Ion  of  Chios,  frag.  73   Kopke ;  Theo.,  Pkys.  Op.,  frag.  4,  ap.  Simpl. 
Phys.  27,  23  DFV,  pp.  323,  324. 

3  For  the  main  Argument  of  this  paragraph  I  am  indebted  to  Burnet 
Gk.  Phil.  I,  pp.  144-50. 

4Ta/caT<i  yrj%  1.    188,  Ta  fieriwpa  \.  228,  ret  deta  irpdyfiara  1.  250;   cf.  t&  Beta. 
Xen.,  Mem.,  I,  I,  \$,  and  rh  irepl  rbv  oipavbv  re  Kal  t^v  yrjv  ira6r)  Pkaedo,  96  b  9. 


SOCRATES 

in  his  middle  age  or  youth.5  Xenophon  on  the  contrary  was 
concerned  with  the  Socrates  who  was  condemned  and  put 
to  death,  and  he  professes  to  argue  that  Socrates  was  actu- 
ally opposed  to  natural  science.  Yet  he  twice  admits  that 
his  Master  was  conversant  with  the  problems  of  natural 
science,6  and  he  makes  other  statements  which  support 
this  admission.  Now  it  is  quite  true,  if  we  accept  the  evi- 
dence of  Plato's  Dialogues,  that  Socrates  in  his  maturity 
did  not  busy  himself  with  natural  science;7  but  there  is  no 
evidence  other  than  Xenophon  to  prove  that  he  was  op- 
posed to  it,  and  Xenophon  contradicts  himself.  Making 
allowance  then  for  the  overstatement  of  Xenophon,  we 
could  argue  from  the  Clouds  and  the  Memorabilia  that 
Socrates  in  his  youth  and  early  manhood  was  interested 
in  the  traditional  subjects  of  natural  science,  but  that  he 
afterward  turned  his  attention  away  from  this  department 
of  knowledge  and  busied  himself  with  problems  which  he 
believed  more  nearly  affected  human  beings.  Now  this  is 
precisely  the  course  which  Socrates  in  the  Phaedo  (96  a) 
says  that  he  followed,  and  the  list  of  subjects  which  he 
there  enumerates  as  having  occupied  his  early  manhood 
corresponds  exactly  to  the  main  topics  of  cosmological 
discussion  in  that  period.8 

5  There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Socrates  was  especially  noticeable, 
except  for  personal  oddities,  while  he  was  engaged  in  his  cosmological 
studies ;  he  became  a  marked  man  when  he  adopted  his  new  method.  But  it 
was  as  an  outstanding  figure  that  the  art  of  Aristophanes  could  use  him. 
Hence  he  had  probably  turned  away  from  cosmology  when  the  dramatist 
ridiculed  him  for  it. 

6  Mem.  IV,  7,  3  and  5. 

7  Confirmed  by  Arist.,  Met.,  I,  6.  987  b  1,  2. 

8  See  Burnet's  edition  of  the  Phaedo,  notes  ad  loc. — The  evidence  would 
lead  us  to  mark  two  periods  in  Socrates'  intellectual  development,  the  first 
beginning  when  he  was  quite  young  (vtos&v,  Phaed.,  96  a  7)  and  devoted  to 
science,  the  second  when  he  took  up  his  method  of  \6yoi.  But  the  second 
period  is  subdivided  by  the  response  of  the  oracle  at  Delphi.  We  may  there- 
fore best  consider  his  thought  as  developing  through  three  stages:  (1) 
physical  investigation,  (2)  the  theory  of  "forms"  and  the  new  method  of 

C  '57  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

Now  it  is  true  that  Socrates'  \6yoi  always  concerned 
problems  that  were  at  least  on  the  surface  practical ;  that 
is  to  say,  the  inquiries  of  his  mature  years  were  restricted 
to  questions  of  immediate  human  import  and  did  not 
embrace  natural  science.  It  is  a  matter  of  considerable 
consequence  to  understand  the  reason  for  this  change 
of  interest.  Professor  Adamson  has  maintained  that  "there 
is  no  evidence  entitling  us  to  connect  the  restriction 
of  the  Socratic  method  with  any  view  on  the  part  of  Soc- 
rates regarding  the  failure  of  previous  speculative  phi- 
losophy."9 Xenophon,  however,  says  in  one  place  that 
Socrates  used  to  wonder  why  the  physical  scientists  had 
never  appreciated  the  impossibility  of  discovering  how 
the  world  came  into  being  and  by  what  necessary  laws  it 
was  governed.10  And  Plato  in  the  Phaedo  makes  it  plain 
that  Socrates  was  thoroughly  dissatisfied  with  the  results 
of  cosmology  when  he  turned  away  from  it.  In  order  to 
appreciate  this  position,  it  is  necessary  to  recall  the  end 
which  cosmology  had  set  for  itself  and  the  methods  which 
had  been  developed  in  order  to  reach  that  end.  The  pre- 
socratic  natural  scientists  had  assumed  no  less  a  task  than 
discovering  the  ultimate  nature  of  the  physical  world,  and 
in  doing  this  they  had,  especially  since  Empedocles,  been 
instrumental  in  creating  truly  scientific  methods  of  investi- 
gation. But  the  very  appreciation  of  scientific  inquiry  was 
bound  to  discredit  all  effort  to  use  it  for  non-scientific  pur- 
poses, such  as  the  undemonstrable  theories  of  a  prime 

investigation,  (3)  his  mission  to  his  fellow-citizens,  in  which  he  was  chiefly 
concerned  with  virtue.  Archer-Hind's  three  divisions  {The  Phaedo  of  Plato, 
p.  89,  n.  2)  appear  to  rest  on  a  mistaken  interpretation  of  &  Kalwpdrepov <ra<pGss 
ijiriaT6.fj.r)v  (96  c  2),  which  I  do  not  believe  refer  to  a  period  previous  to  the 
physical  investigation,  but  to  the  apparently  satisfactory  results  at  first 
reached  in  that  investigation. 

9  The  Development  of  Greek  Philosophy,  p.  75 ;  cf.  Archer-Hind,  op.  cit., 
p.  86,  n.  9. 
10  Mem.,  I,  1,  13. 

t  158: 


SOCRATES 

substance.  It  was  evident  that  if  science  was  to  be  science, 
it  must  stick  to  facts  and  become  various  sciences ;  and  with 
such  sciences  Socrates  had  no  quarrel,  as  Xenophon  ex- 
pressly says.11  The  failure,  then,  which  turned  Socrates 
away  from  the  previous  speculation,  was  the  quite  obvious 
fact  that  it  had  attempted  to  be  a  metaphysic  while  re- 
maining a  science,  and,  as  a  metaphysic,  it  had  become 
a  patchwork  of  conflicting  guesses. 

But  both  Xenophon  and  Plato  also  attribute  to  their 
Master  a  conviction  that  the  traditional  cosmology  was 
useless  and  of  no  concern  to  men.  The  former  author  de- 
scribes Socrates  as  asking  why  people  engage  in  this  study ; 
do  they  do  it  because  they  think  they  can  thereby  utilize 
the  forces  of  nature  or  merely  because  they  wish  to  have 
the  knowledge?  Socrates  himself,  says  Xenophon,  was 
interested  only  in  the  knowledge  which  would  make  men 
good  gentlemen  and  citizens.12  Plato  has  him  take  the  same 
position  in  the  Phaedrus  (229  e),  where  he  remarks:  "To 
be  inquisitive  about  that  which  is  not  my  concern,  while 
I  am  still  ignorant  of  my  own  self,  would  be  ridiculous."13 
Now  if  we  remember  that  cosmological  speculation  had 
been  based,  in  the  minds  of  its  authors  at  least,  on  its  prac- 
tical or  ethical  use,  that  in  fact  it  was  supposed  to  deter- 
mine their  actions  and  their  attitude  toward  the  divine 
powers,  in  short  their  religion,  then  certainly  Socrates' 
condemnation  of  it  as  useless  will  appear  startling  and 
unprecedented. 

But  let  us  recall  the  intellectual  tendencies  of  the  per- 
iod. During  Socrates'  earlier  life,  while  he  was  still  en- 

11  ibid.,  IV,  7,  2-7. 

12  Mem.,  I,  l,  15  and  16,  cf.  IV,  2,  24. 

13  cf .  also  Phaedr.,  230  d  3 :  "I  am  a  lover  of  knowledge,  and  the  country 
and  the  trees  will  not  teach  me  anything,  while  men  who  live  in  the  city 
will." 

C  159  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

gaged  in  physical  inquiry,  there  had  been  a  growing 
interest  in  the  nature  and  works  of  human  beings.  The 
scientific  study  of  physiological  and  psychological  sub- 
jects, as  well  as  dialectical  argumentation,  which  seemed 
inevitably  to  involve  the  question  of  truth  and  knowledge, 
were  signs  of  the  time.  These  young  studies  got  room 
to  develop  in  the  breakdown  of  the  older  cosmology,  and 
they  received  a  tremendous  impetus  from  the  feverish 
political  activity  of  the  Periclean  democracy,  which  was 
essentially  a  humanistic  movement.  Moreover,  in  all  this 
thought  about  human  activity,  man  was  considered  by 
himself  and  not  as  a  mere  material  part  of  the  universe; 
and  thus  really  for  the  first  time  in  Greek  reflection  was 
man  fully  differentiated  from  the  rest  of  the  world,  as  a 
moral,  political,  and  intellectual  being.  It  was  therefore 
possible  to  investigate  mankind  quite  apart  from  physical 
nature,  and  a  demarcation  could  be  made  between  those 
studies  that  dealt  with  the  one  and  those  that  considered 
the  other.  Hence  that  general  rule  which  held  good  for  the 
earlier  reflective  thought,  that  there  were  no  categories 
separating  knowledge  into  departments  of  religion,  phys- 
ics, and  the  like,14  now  no  longer  was  valid;  for  Socrates 
consciously  set  on  one  side  all  those  scientific  studies  which 
dealt  with  nature,  and  devoted  his  energy  to  the  new 
humanistic  subjects.  Furthermore,  in  this  separation  of 
man  and  nature,  it  was  obviously  impossible  to  investigate 
man  by  means  of  nature ;  so  that  when  Socrates  called  the 
traditional  cosmology  useless,  he  meant  that  it  would  not 
explain  man  or  tell  him  how  to  live,  as  the  previous  phi- 
losophers had  maintained. 

Yet  in  a  fundamental  sense  the  aim  of  Socrates  was  the 
same  as  that  of  the  presocratic  thinkers,  for  he,  like  them, 

14  See  above,  p.  5. 


SOCRATES 

was  searching  for  the  ultimate  nature  of  the  world  in 
order  that  men  might  know  the  meaning  of  their  lives.  The 
end  of  his  philosophy,  like  the  end  of  their  cosmology, 
was  essentially  an  ethical  one:  right  living,  based  on 
correct  understanding.  In  his  conversation  with  Aristo- 
demus,  as  reported  by  Xenophon,  he  argues  that  there  are 
gods  who  rule  the  world  wisely  and  that  virtue  depends 
on  man's  recognition  of  these  gods.15  And  in  the  Republic, 
Socrates  says  that  philosophy,  tempered  with  music,  is  the 
only  savior  of  virtue  throughout  life  and  the  only  guide 
to  a  wise  choice  in  the  next  world  ;16  to  obtain  such  knowl- 
edge, a  philosopher  will  be  willing  even  to  practise  death 
in  life.17  Philosophy,  therefore,  as  Socrates  thought  of  it, 
was  to  fulfil  the  same  ethical  and  religious  function  which 
the  previous  cosmology  had  attempted. 

Nor  was  this  philosophy  so  radically  different  in  the 
ostensible  object  of  its  investigations,  from  the  earlier 
natural  science,  as  Socrates  sometimes  suggested.  The  ob- 
ject of  the  latter  had  been  a  cause  or  force  which  in  some 
way  could  be  used  to  explain  the  creation  and  present 
operation  of  the  world.  Now  in  the  autobiographical  sec- 
tion of  the  Phaedo,  Socrates,  after  describing  his  impa- 
tience with  natural  science,  declares  that  he  is  still  trying 
to  find  the  cause  of  things'  being  as  they  are.18  In  other 
words,  the  object  of  Socrates'  investigations  was  still  a 
cause  which  operated  in  the  physical  world. 

4.  The  course  of  previous  inquiry  into  nature  had  led  to 
the  assumption  of  a  succession  of  first  causes  which  became 
more  and  more  removed  from  the  sensible  world  as  the 
series  of  attempts  to  explain  it  lengthened.  The  last  three 

15  Mem.,  I,  4. 


15  Mem.,  I,  4. 

16  Rep.,  VIII,  549  b;  X,  618. 

17  Phaedo,  64  a-67  b. 

18  cf.  ibid.,  97  b  2-7  with  99  c  6-d  2. 


n  161 3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

of  these  systems,  those  of  Empedocles,  Anaxagoras,  and 
Philolaus,  had  erected  as  their  final  postulates  the  figures 
of  Love,  Mind,  and  Harmony,  whose  causal  effectiveness 
in  no  way  depended  on  their  materiality  and  whose  very 
names  suggested  an  insensible  nature.  The  Pythagorean 
especially  had  gone  to  great  lengths  in  getting  away  from 
perceivable  objects;  he  had  not  only  taken  the  general 
concept  of  Harmony  as  his  first  cause  but  also,  led  by  the 
mathematical  studies  of  his  Order,  he  had  developed  a 
theory  of  knowledge,  which  involved  the  idea  of  measur- 
able forms  of  objects.  He  never  went  so  far  as  to  assert 
that  such  a  form  was  not  part  of  the  material  object  to 
which  it  belonged,  but  nevertheless  the  very  notion  of 
form  was  so  inherently  abstract  that  it  tended  to  divert 
attention  from  the  obviously  material  qualities;  and  fur- 
thermore in  the  active  power  which  he  apparently  at- 
tributed to  forms,  they  seemed  to  belong  to  a  different 
order  of  existence  from  the  inert  elements  on  which  they 
worked.  Now  Socrates,  as  we  have  seen,  was  conversant 
with  the  systems  of  earlier  Greek  inquirers,  and  it  appears 
that  there  was  some  very  close  relationship  between  him 
and  the  Pythagoreans.  He  numbered  among  his  most 
earnest  pupils  several  members  of  the  Order  (Simmias, 
Cebes,  and  Phaedondas),  who  had  previously  sat  under 
their  own  master,  Philolaus,  in  Thebes;19  and  Echecrates 
and  the  Pythagoreans  at  Phlius  are  represented  by  Plato 
as  deeply  interested  not  only  in  the  personal  circumstances 
of  Socrates  but  also  in  his  teachings.20  Nor  was  this  interest 
merely  on  the  side  of  the  Pythagoreans,  for  Socrates  was 
well  enough  acquainted  with  the  doctrine  of  Philolaus  to 
be  able  to  explain  a  phase  of  it  to  his  former  students  ;21 

19  Xen.,  Mem.,  I,  2,  48 ;  III,  11,  17 ;  Plat.,  Phaedo,  59  c  l. 

20  Phaedo,  57  a-59  c ;  102  a. 

21  ibid.,  61  d. 

[    162    ] 


SOCRATES 

and  the  resemblance  of  many  of  Socrates'  views  to  those 
known  as  Pythagorean  is  admitted  on  all  sides.  One  of  these 
points  of  similarity  is  the  subject  with  which  we  are  now 
engaged,  namely,  the  doctrine  of  forms.  In  the  Phaedo 
we  find  Socrates  maintaining  that  there  are  intelligible 
forms,  apprehended  only  by  thought,  to  which  particular 
objects  of  sense  approximate  in  their  various  qualities; 
there  is,  for  example,  the  form  or  idea  of  Beauty,  in  which 
beautiful  things  share  so  far  as  they  are  beautiful.  The 
forms  mentioned  here  are  those  of  qualities,  such  as  good- 
ness, beauty,  equality.22  Now  it  is  possible  that  some  of 
the  Pythagoreans  contemporary  with  Philolaus  had 
adapted  his  doctrine  of  measurable  forms  so  as  to  apply 
it  to  moral  and  esthetic  qualities.  Aristotle  said  that  the 
Pythagoreans  had  given  numbers  to  a  few  such  abstractions 
as  opportunity,  marriage,  justice  ;23  but  it  seems  to  me  most 
likely  that  this,  as  well  as  the  doctrine  that  things  are 
numbers,  was  the  work  of  Eurytus,  Philolaus'  disciple, 
who  gave  numbers  to  all  sorts  of  things  and  appears  to 
have  carried  the  number-theory  to  absurd  extravagances 
of  analogy.  We  should  accordingly  say  that  the  Pythago- 
reans of  Socrates'  time  had  got  as  far  as  positing  measur- 
able forms  of  natural  objects,  by  which  those  objects  were 
known.24  We  now  find  Socrates  positing  forms  of  moral 
and  esthetic  qualities,  which  are  apprehended  only  by  the 
intellect.  Philolaus  did  not  say  that  his  forms  were  mate- 
rial, but  the  implication  is  that  they  were;  Socrates,  so  far 
as  I  can  find,  never  ascribed  immateriality  to  his  forms, 

22  In  the  Republic,  Socrates  posits  forms  of  inanimate  objects,  such  as  a 
bed  (X,  596)  ;  even  this,  however,  is  an  artificial  thing,  made  by  man,  and 
I  know  of  no  evidence  that  Socrates  ever  assumed  the  form  of  a  natural 
object.  Furthermore  it  is  doubtful  whether  we  can  refer  even  the  idea  of 
bed  to  Socrates,  because  I  believe  the  Republic  is  more  Plato  than  Socrates. 

23  Met.,  XIII,  1078  b  23. 
a4  cf.  above,  pp.  139  ff. 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

but  he  implied  it.25  The  truth  seems  to  be  that  the  question 
of  substance  was  latent  in  both  these  authors,  but  that  the 
mind  of  Socrates  had  at  least  grasped  the  idea  of  the  in- 
corporeal and  could  work  with  it.  The  great  and  explicit 
difference  between  him  and  Philolaus  lay  in  the  fact  that 
the  Pythagorean  form  was  a  particular,  changing  with  its 
object,  while  the  Socratic  form  was  a  universal  which 
remained  the  same  all  through  the  alterations  of  the  objects 
which  shared  it.  The  originality  of  Socrates  at  this  point 
is  found  in  his  creative  expression  of  general  forms,  by 
which  he  enriched  philosophy  with  the  addition  of  a  whole 
new  world  of  data,  whose  nature  even  he  but  imperfectly 
realized. 

Furthermore,  Philolaus,  in  order  to  combat  the  preva- 
lent sceptical  attitude,  had  worked  out  a  theory  of  knowl- 
edge, which  maintained  virtually  that  knowledge  de- 
pended on  measurement  and  related  to  the  forms;  but 
this  could  not  be  applied  to  universal  (immaterial)  forms, 
so  that  Socrates  kept  it  for  objects  of  sense,26  and  went  on 
to  develop  a  new  theory  of  intellectual  knowledge  of  uni- 
versal forms.  To  this  end,  he  made  a  clear  distinction 
between  sensation  and  thought,  though  that  distinction 
again  had  been  implied  by  most  of  the  previous  philoso- 
phers who  had  been  interested  in  psychological  matters. 
Finally,  we  must  notice  the  significant  fact  that  Socrates 
was  following  Philolaus  in  ascribing  causal  force  to  the 
forms.  The  latter  author  held  that  each  particular  form 
had  an  active  power  which  made  and  kept  the  object  what 
it  was;  and  we  surmised  that  this  individual  power  was 
derived  from  the  world-regulative  energy  of  Harmony. 

25  Socrates  kept  alongside  of  his  moral  and  esthetic  forms  the  Philolaic 
notion  of  physical  shape.  Thus  in  Meno,  76  a  6,  using  the  words  of  Philo- 
laus, he  defines  the  shape  of  an  object  as  "the  limit  of  solid." 

29  Rep.,  X,  602. 

C  164] 


SOCRATES 

Now  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  Socrates  in  the  Phaedo,  after 
expressing  his  dissatisfaction  with  previous  attempts  to 
find  causes,  and  avowing  his  own  intention  of  searching 
for  them  in  a  new  way,  proceeds  to  develop  his  theory 
of  forms.27  We  are  therefore  to  suppose  that  this  theory 
was  in  some  way  a  theory  of  causation  also.  The  form  of 
Beauty,  by  its  partial  presence  in  objective  things,  causes 
them  to  be  beautiful ;  and  in  general,  every  form  is  in  this 
way  a  cause.28  This  is  as  far  as  Socrates  gets  in  the  Phaedo, 
and  he  therefore  ends  with  a  multitude  of  universal  forms 
or  causes  disconnected  with  one  another  in  their  pure  state ; 
they  meet  only  in  their  partial  incarnation  in  material 
things.  The  net  result,  therefore,  of  Socrates'  inquiry  on 
this  point  is  the  conception  of  causes  that  work  directly 
on  sensible  objects.  Obviously,  these  causes  were  by  no 
means  mere  subjective  creations  of  the  mind,  but  rather 
the  most  real  of  existing  things;  yet  they  were  plainly  and 
frankly  given  a  universal  and  intelligible  nature,  as  con- 
trasted with  the  particulars  of  sense.  They  thus  formed  a 
new  class  of  things,  belonging  to  a  different  order  of  exist- 
ence from  the  world  of  changing  individuals  and  more  real 
than  the  latter. 

5.  Let  us  now  turn  to  a  consideration  of  the  nature  of 
causal  activity.  In  the  Phaedo,  Socrates  sums  up  the  efforts 
of  previous  thinkers  with  the  statement  that  they  were 
looking  for  the  physical  conditions  which  determined 
activity,  while  he  is  interested  in  the  end  toward  which 
any  action  is  directed.  In  general,  the  object  of  his  search 
is  the  force  which  disposes  and  constrains  things  in  the 
best  possible  way.29  This  conception  apparently  applies 
to  each  Form  in  its  relation  to  the  particulars  of  sense;  we 

27  Phaedo,  100  b  3-8. 

28  ibid.,  100  c  6  and  d  8. 

29  ibid.,  99  c  1 . 

C  165  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

are  given  to  understand,  for  example,  that  when  the  Form 
of  Beauty  itself  makes  a  thing  beautiful,  it  does  so  be- 
cause it  is  best.30  It  follows  that  Socrates  conceived  the 
only  true  causal  activity  to  be  that  which  is  directed 
toward  some  end,  and  it  seems  plain  that  he  reached  this 
position  from  a  consideration  of  human  conduct.  Let  us 
compare  two  illustrations  which  he  himself  gives  us. 
When  he  is  expressing  his  dissatisfaction  with  previous 
natural  scientists,  he  says  that  if  you  should  ask  one  of 
these  gentlemen  why  Socrates  is  sitting  here  in  prison,  he 
would  produce  a  long  rigmarole  about  bones  and  muscles 
and  joints;  whereas  the  real  reason  was  that  Socrates 
thought  it  right  to  remain.  Later  he  remarks  that  he  can- 
not understand  why  such  physical  conditions  as  color  or 
form  make  an  object  beautiful,  since  only  Beauty  can  make 
anything  beautiful.  In  both  these  instances,  the  physical 
conditions  of  a  phenomenon  are  contrasted  with  what 
Socrates  proclaims  to  be  the  true  cause  of  its  being;  but 
this  true  cause  is  in  one  case  a  conscious  human  purpose,  in 
the  other  a  Form.  This  suggests  that  a  Form  was  also  a 
teleological  cause,  and  it  is  at  least  possible  that  Socrates 
thought  of  his  Forms  as  endowed  with  some  sort  of 
consciousness. 

I  do  not  believe  that  any  thinker,  no  matter  how  unsys- 
tematic, could  possibly  rest  content  with  such  a  position — 
a  plurality  of  unrelated  causes.  It  is  therefore  tempting  to 
utilize  the  conception  of  the  Good,  as  found  in  the  sixth 
Book  of  the  Republic,  to  unify  and  head  up,  as  it  were,  the 
whole  scheme  of  causation;  but  I  do  not  believe  we  are 
justified  in  attributing  to  Socrates  the  philosophy  of  the 
Republic.  This  work  no  doubt  forms  a  transition  from  the 
essentially  Socratic  to  the  essentially  Platonic  Dialogues, 

30  Phaedo,  99  a  4-d  1  with  100  c  9-d  8. 

r.  166] 


SOCRATES 

as  the  style  indicates;31  but  the  systematization  that  is 
found  here  must,  in  my  opinion,  be  due  to  Plato.  Plato 
himself  was  not  a  systematic  philosopher  in  the  German 
sense,  as  is  shown  by  the  lack  of  connection  between  his 
Dialogues;  but  he  was  systematic  enough  to  reduce  his 
thoughts  to  written  expression,  and  in  the  case  of  the  Re- 
public and  the  Laws  especially,  the  expression  was  a 
pretty  comprehensive  philosophy.  On  the  other  hand,  Soc- 
rates never  wrote  anything  but  was  always  satisfied  to 
develop  his  thoughts  one  by  one  in  conversation.  For  this 
reason  alone,  the  Republic  appears  to  me  fundamentally 
Platonic.  Furthermore,  certain  positions  are  taken  in  this 
Dialogue,  which  it  would  have  been  very  difficult  for  the 
historical  Socrates  to  maintain.  For  example,  when  the 
Guardians  have  finished  their  education,  they  are  to  be 
made  to  go  back  into  the  life  of  the  state  periodically 
and  hold  public  office  by  turns;  but  Socrates  steadfastly 
refused  to  hold  office  (something  quite  different  from  his 
"mission")  and  it  would  have  been  unnatural  for  him  to 
make  such  a  provision.  Again,  the  emphasis  on  the  sciences 
in  the  higher  education  of  the  Guardians  is  strikingly  in- 
consistent with  the  position  of  Socrates.  Hence,  for  what 
we  might  call  stylistic,  schematic,  and  philosophical  rea- 
sons, I  believe  the  Republic  represents  Plato  rather  than 
Socrates. 

But  particular  ideas  in  the  book  may  well  be  originally 
Socratic,  or  only  slight  developments  of  Socratic  theses; 
and  I  presume  that  this  is  the  case  with  the  Good.  It  is, 
as  I  have  already  remarked,  hardly  conceivable  that  Soc- 
rates should  have  ended  his  thought  on  causation  with  a 
plurality  of  unrelated  causes;  and  his  whole  conception 

31  e.g.  the  presence  of  both  toj  6vti,  used  exclusively  in  the  earlier  group, 
and  of  6vtws,  which  gradually  replaced  it.  The  subject  has  been  exhaus- 
tively treated  by  Lewis  Campbell  and  by  Lutoslawski. 

r.  1673 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

of  Forms,  as  involving  a  teleological  explanation,  would 
make  us  expect  some  supreme  end  or  good  toward  which 
all  the  world  was  directed.  Furthermore,  in  his  conversa- 
tion with  Euthydemus  as  recorded  in  the  Metnorabilia 
(IV,  3),  Socrates  propounds  what  is  really  an  anthro- 
pocentric  teleology,  in  the  course  of  which  he  mentions 
"the  other  gods"  and  "Him  who  orders  and  holds  together 
the  whole  cosmos"  yet  is  invisible.  Now  Xenophon  claims 
to  have  been  present  at  this  conversation,  and  he  definitely 
attributes  to  Socrates  the  belief  in  a  supreme  god  who  is 
good  and  who  directs  the  world  for  the  best.  If  then  the 
Forms  are  causes,  it  is  only  natural  to  suppose  that  they 
are  inferior  causes,  working  under  the  control  of  the 
supreme  cause,  who  is  o  #eos,  just  as  the  other  gods  and 
demons  do ;  they  would  thus  form  part  of  the  divine  prin- 
ciple (to  Scll/jlovlov).  That  Socrates  "hinted  at  the  ulti- 
mate unity  of  all  the  forms  in  the  Good,"  as  Professor 
Burnet  holds,32  seems  to  me  most  probable;  but  I  would  go 
further  and  say  that  he  also  probably  thought  of  the  Good 
as  in  some  way  combined  with  the  divine  purpose  which 
rules  the  world.33 

If  such  an  interpretation  is  allowed,  it  is  possible  to 
gauge  the  similarity  between  Socrates  and  the  Pytha- 
goreans. The  Good,  as  the  supreme  cause  which  arranges 
and  ordains  all  things,  is  Socrates'  development  of  Har- 
mony, as  we  found  it  in  Philolaus.  But  whereas  in  the 
Pythagorean,  the  principle  is  merely  the  general  concep- 
tion of  cosmic  orderliness,  in  Socrates  this  is  extended  by 
the  addition  of  the  moral  idea  of  human  goodness.  The 
Socratic  notion  comprehends  the  Pythagorean,  because  to 

32  Gk.  Phil.,  p.  169. 

33  The  language  of  the  Republic,  505  d  sqq.,  has  led  some  interpreters  to 
identify  the  Good  with  god ;  this  is  quite  certainly  wrong  for  Plato,  as  the 
Timaeus  shows,  but  there  is  no  reason  why  it  may  not  be  true  for  Socrates. 

t  1683 


SOCRATES 

the  Greeks  a  good  or  goodness  always  involved  a  perfect 
relation  between  a  subject  or  cause  and  an  object,  effect,  or 
activity;  and,  in  the  Gorgias,  Socrates  asserts  that  human 
goodness  is  due  to  ra^ts  and  ^007x09  in  the  soul.34  The 
Good  is  more  than  this,  simply  because  it  contains  a 
purpose.  In  the  second  place,  no  greater  evidence  of  Socra- 
tes' indebtedness  to  Philolaus  and  the  Pythagorean  phi- 
losophy can  be  found  than  the  fact  that  he  kept  the  Forms 
as  physical  causes,  and  believed  that,  as  such,  they  some- 
how entered  into  the  composition  of  physical  objects.  But 
whereas  in  the  Philolaic  doctrine  each  object  had  one  form 
which  made  it  what  it  was,  Socrates'  Forms  were  univer- 
sal, many  of  which  were  partially  present  in  every  object. 
Hence  insofar  as  the  Forms  were  universals,  they  became 
a  different  kind  of  thing  from  the  objects  of  sense. 

6.  No  doubt  there  were  many  gaps  in  the  philosophy  of 
Socrates;  but  is  that  not  what  we  should  expect  in  a 
thinker  of  his  peculiarities'?  Great  as  he  was  as  a 
thinker,  he  was  greatest  as  a  teacher;  and  he  never  took 
pains  to  crystallize  his  thoughts  in  formal,  systematic,  and 
comprehensive  expression.  Yet  there  is  one  inconsistency 
in  his  doctrine  which  we  cannot  overlook,  if  only  because 
it  is  fundamental  to  his  position  in  Greek  philosophy.  The 
theory  of  Forms  was  not  meant  as  a  mere  logical  formula 
but  as  a  general  explanation  of  causation  in  the  world. 
It  was  by  participation  in  the  Forms  that  physical  objects 
came  into  being.  And  yet  the  whole  theory  was  formed 
solely  from  the  human  point  of  view.  The  Forms  as  causes 
were  primarily  human  reasons;  as  objects  of  knowledge, 
they  were  primarily  human  concepts.  And  the  coming  into 
being  and  ceasing  to  be  of  physical  objects  was  the  coming 
and  going  in  those  objects  of  qualities  which  were  in  their 

34  Gorg.,  504  b-d ;  cf .  Rep.,  IV,  443  d. 

r.  1693 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

separate  individuality  teleological  mental  abstractions.35 
Socrates  discarded  the  natural  science  of  his  time  and  de- 
voted himself  to  a  study  of  men;  and  then,  having  made 
his  formula  from  the  activities  of  men,  he  extended  it  to 
all  nature.  He  made  a  useful  distinction  between  human- 
ity and  nature  only  to  obliterate  it,  by  throwing  out  into 
the  latter  the  principles  which  he  had  observed  in  the 
former.  He  thus  attempted  to  explain  the  natural  world 
without  any  scientific  investigation  of  it,  and  in  this  re- 
spect his  inquiry  falls  into  the  sharpest  contrast  with  that 
of  Empedocles.  The  cosmologist  had  attempted  to  develop 
a  truly  scientific  investigation  of  nature  by  building  up 
theory  on  experiment  and  observation;  but  Socrates 
argued  to  the  ultimate  reality  of  the  world  and  was  there- 
fore frankly  a  metaphysician. 

7.  This  brings  us  to  an  examination  of  Socrates'  logical 
method,  which  may  be  considered,  besides  his  doctrine  of 
Forms,  as  a  second  great  contribution  to  philosophy.  It 
was  obviously  impossible  to  investigate  the  Forms  in  their 
universal  aspect  by  sense  experience,  and  it  therefore  be- 
came necessary  to  deal  with  them  by  pure  thought.  But  the 
later  Eleatics  and  many  of  the  Sophists  had  abundantly 
and  with  discouraging  thoroughness  demonstrated  the  ex- 
treme fallibility  of  the  human  mind  amid  objects  far 
removed  from  the  evidence  of  the  senses.  Only  on  one 
department  of  knowledge  had  the  activity  of  these  men 
failed  to  throw  doubt,  and  that  was  the  science  of  mathe- 
matics, as  it  existed  at  the  time  in  the  disciplines  of  arith- 
metic, geometry,  and  harmonics.  Now  the  Pythagoreans, 
who  were  especially  devoted  to  these  subjects,  had  appar- 

35  By  "teleological"  here,  I  mean  what  James  suggests  when  he  says : 
"The  essence  of  a  thing  is  that  one  of  its  properties  which  is  so  important 
for  my  interests  that  in  comparison  with  it  I  may  neglect  the  rest."  {Psy- 
chology, Briefer  Course,  p.  357.) 

C  170  ] 


SOCRATES 

ently  believed  that  the  epistemological  foundations  of  the 
mathematical  sciences  could  not  be  shaken  because  of  their 
exactness ;  they  depended  on  measurement  of  one  kind  or 
another,  and  measurement  admitted  of  no  dispute.  Hence 
Philolaus,  in  attempting  to  meet  the  sceptical  attack,  had 
developed  this  notion  of  exact  measurement  into  a  general 
criterion  of  all  knowledge.  But  Socrates  seems  to  have 
understood  that  geometry,  for  instance,  had  withstood 
the  hostile  approaches  of  the  sceptic,  not  because  it  was 
a  matter  of  exactness  (for  the  triangle  of  the  geometer 
was  in  reality  not  an  object  of  physical  experience 
at  all),36  but  because  it  dealt  only  with  objects  which  were 
denned  before  they  were  handled  and  therefore  had 
to  be  handled  in  accordance  with  the  definition.  This 
being  so,  it  would  be  possible  to  treat  any  subject  with 
similar  certitude  by  first  defining  it  and  then  experi- 
menting with  it  within  the  limits  of  the  prescribed  formula. 
Accordingly  Socrates  proceded  to  apply  this  method  in 
his  inquiries,  and  it  is  to  this  that  Aristotle  refers,  when  he 
says  that  two  things  may  fairly  be  attributed  to  Socrates : 
universal  definitions  and  inductive  reasoning.37 

This  well-known  phrase  has  been  the  occasion  of  so 
much  misunderstanding  that  it  will  be  well  to  clarify  its 
meaning  in  detail  by  a  more  extended  examination  of  it 
and  of  Socrates'  methods  so  far  as  they  can  be  abstracted. 
But  it  should  first  be  noted  that  in  reality  the  universal 
definitions  and  the  inductive  reasoning,  of  which  Aristotle 
speaks,  are  not  to  be  considered  as  two  separate  things,  but 
rather  as  different  phases  or  even  parts  of  the  same  logical 
process ;  and  it  would  be  well  to  understand  the  expression 

36  cf.  Phaedo,  65  d. 

37  Met.  XIII,  4,  1078  b  23;  cf.  De  Part.  An.,  I,  1,  642  a  26;  Xenophon, 
Mem.,  IV,  6,  13-15. 

C  171  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

as  signifying  universal  definitions  by  means  of  arguments 
of  an  inductive  nature. 

( 1)  Socrates'  arguments  were  directed  toward  establish- 
ing real  definitions;  that  is,  the  conclusions  which  he 
sought  were  not  formal  propositions  in  the  style  "All  M 
is  P"  mere  proofs  that  certain  instances  are  subsumed 
under  a  general  type  or  that  every  specimen  is  included  in 
the  species.  They  always  ended  in  fixing  the  precise  mean- 
ing of  an  existing  thing.  For  instance,  Socrates  objects  to 
Meno's  saying  that  courage  is  virtue  and  discretion  and 
cleverness  and  magnificence  and  so  forth;  what  he  wants  is 
the  one  ultimate  essence  of  the  virtue.38  To  use  the  phrase- 
ology of  Aristotle,  Socrates  was  not  seeking  ret  {JLeprj  but 
to  ti  kcniv  of  the  quality. 

(2)  The  process  of  establishing  the  definition  was  of  an 
inductive  nature ;  but  Aristotle  did  not  mean  to  imply  that 
Socrates  employed  true  induction,  which,  Aristotle  held, 
demanded  complete  enumeration  of  the  particulars.89  Soc- 
rates' procedure  was  like  that  of  induction  in  that  it 
"brought  up"  concrete  instances  or  examples  of  a  universal 
quality.40 

(3)  Socrates  used  a  particular  to  get  out  of  it  the  precise 
meaning  of  the  general  as  applied  to  it.  Aristotle  gives  an 
illustration  of  this  process  in  determining  the  meaning  of 
fjLeya\o\jjvxicL, though  he  neither  attributes  it  to  Socrates 
nor  describes  it  as  induction.41  The  particulars  are  in- 
stances of  a  type,  and  we  define  the  type  by  establishing 
its  significance  in  the  particulars.  Hence  it  is  possible  that 
one  instance,  if  properly  analyzed,  could  bring  us  to  the 

38  Meno,  74  a  4-10.  cf.  Euthyphro,  6  d. 

39  Anal.  Prior.,  II,  23,  3:  yy&p  iwaywyr)  Siairdvwvr. 

40  On  the  meaning  of  iiraywy-r)  and  its  cognates,  see  Bonitz,  Index  Arist., 
s.v.;  Joseph,  Introd.  to  Logic,  p.  350;  A.  Busse,  Sokrates,  p.  141. 

41  Anal.  Post.,  II,  13,  18. 

C  172  H 


SOCRATES 

definition  of  the  quality;  but  ordinarily  either  it  is  easier 
to  recognize  the  quality  by  comparing  several  different 
manifestations  of  it,  or  a  second  and  third  manifestation 
will  test  and  supplement  the  definition  gained  from  the 
first. 

(4)  In  analyzing  a  particular  instance,  we  may  be  said 
to  "recognize"  the  general  quality  in  it.42  Aristotle  bases 
this  doctrine  on  the  argument  of  the  Meno  that  knowledge 
is  reminiscence,  and  so  he  associates  it  with  the  name  of 
Socrates.  Thus  the  inductive  process  of  definition  rests 
finally  on  a  factual  intuition,  the  recognition  of  a  univer- 
sal of  which  we  have  had  previous  knowledge,  though  we 
may  never  have  had  knowledge  of  the  particulars  in  which 
the  universal  is  found. 

(5)  After  we  recognize  the  universal,  we  proceed  to 
mark  it  off,  delimit,  or  define  it ;  and  this  definition  is  the 
establishment  of  its  essential  reality.  Here  we  must  re- 
member the  confusion  which  existed  at  the  time  as  to  the 
logical  import  of  the  copula  in  judgment.  For  Socrates,  to 
say  what  a  thing  was  implied  that  it  was ;  or,  to  put  it  in 
another  way,  until  Plato  discovered  the  ambiguity  and 
cleared  it  away  in  the  Sophist,  all  propositions  were  sup- 
posed to  have  an  existential  import.  When  Socrates  as- 
serted that  justice  or  equality  or  beauty  was  this  or  that, 
he  implied  that  justice  or  equality  or  beauty  existed — they 
were  "things."43  Hence  a  definition  fixed  the  existence  of 
the  object  defined. 

42  Anal.  Prior.,  II,  21,  7. 

43  Protag.,  330  c ;  Phaedo,  65  d  4,  74  a  9.  Socrates  employed  two  phrases 
in  commencing  a  definition:  (a)  "do  you  call  soul  something*?"  (Gorg., 
464  a  1,  Protag.,  358  d  5,  Meno,  75  e  1  and  76  a  1,  Phaed.,  103  c  ll); 
(b)  "do  we  think  or  say  that  soul  is  something?"  {Phaed.,  64  c  2,  and 
65  d  4).  (a)  asserts  that  the  (term)  soul  has  a  meaning,  (b)  that  the 
(thing)  soul  exists ;  but  there  appears  to  have  been  no  distinction  between 
the  two  phrases  in  Socrates'  use  of  them. 

£  173  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

(6)  The  inductive  definition  was  thus  a  way  of  investi- 
gating actually  existent  things  by  means  of  our  judgments 
about  them.  In  this  respect  Socrates  ironically  contrasts 
it  with  the  scientific  method  of  examining  things  directly; 
that  is,  no  doubt,  a  simpler  way,  and  his  own  method  may 
be  a  "second  best,"  a  makeshift,  for  its  arguments  seem  to 
be  only  images  of  things.  But  the  trouble  with  the  scientific 
method  is  that  it  will  not  work — at  least,  says  Socrates, 
it  did  not  work  for  him.  So  he  turned  to  his  new  mode  of 
investigating  things  by  argument,  which  he  believes  to 
be  just  as  true  and  valid  as  the  other.44 

(7)  The  inductive  method  is  merely  one  manifestation 
of  the  general  logical  method  of  Socrates,  which  he  de- 
scribes simply  as  putting  together  statements  that  agree.45 
Now  this  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  inference,  which 
depends  in  the  last  resort  on  a  recognition  of  the  agree- 
ment or  consistency  between  two  judgments;  and  Soc- 
rates' description  of  his  method  in  his  own  informal  way 
of  saying  that  he  reasoned  about  things,  instead  of  inves- 
tigating them  directly.  He  thus  developed  the  procedure 
which  Parmenides  had  initiated.  Furthermore,  the  reason- 
ing now  took  the  inductive  form,  when  it  was  directed 
from  particulars  to  the  definition  of  a  quality,  and  now 
the  deductive  form,  when  it  proceeded  from  an  assump- 
tion to  its  consequences. 

(8)  But  the  argument  of  Socrates  was  conditioned  by 
the  fact  that  he  preferred  to  develop  his  thought  in  con- 
versation, and  not  by  lecture  or  by  straight-away  logical 

44  Phaedo,  99  d-100  a.  The  phrase  Setirepos  ttXovs  has  long  been  a  stumbling 
block  and  there  is  a  considerable  literature  on  the  subject,  for  which  see 
Archer-Hind's  edition,  Appendix  II.  It  seems  to  me  the  difficulty  is  born 
of  matter-of-fact  temperament,  which  insists  on  being  grave  even  where 
Socrates  was  ironical,  cf.  97  b  7 :  "I  am  jumbling  together  another  method 
of  my  own." 

45  ibid.,  100  a. 

r.  1743 


SOCRATES 

processes  set  down  in  writing.46  Now  it  is  impossible  to 
argue  with  a  person  unless  the  two  of  you  can  agree  on 
some  things ;  and  Socrates'  method  therefore  necessitated, 
first,  an  agreed  starting  point,  and  second,  continued 
agreement  at  each  stage  of  the  argument.  In  other  words, 
the  logic  of  Socrates  partook  of  the  nature  of  rhetoric,  to 
the  extent  that  it  was  directed  toward  winning  the  assent 
of  specified  persons.  It  was  thus  in  its  largest  aspect  a 
human  performance,  a  conversation  between  two  person- 
alities, the  interaction  of  two  points  of  view,  even  when 
Socrates  seems  to  do  all  or  most  of  it  himself.47  It  was 
part  of  the  agreement  which  was  made  at  the  start  that  one 
person  should  ask,  and  the  other  answer,  questions.  The 
latter  was  obviously  at  a  disadvantage,  and  there  are  many 
instances  in  the  early  Dialogues  where  the  respondent  has 
to  be  reminded  of  his  compact  to  do  nothing  but  reply — 
his  turn  to  ask  will  come  later.  The  essential  economy  of 
the  method  is  that  it  allows  the  free  working  out  of  the 
hypothesis  or  proposition  by  its  protagonist,  while  yet 
forcing  him  to  keep  the  bounds  of  reasonable  inference 
at  every  step  on  pain  of  disagreement  by  his  adversary. 
Thus  both  the  argument  and  the  man  are  on  trial,48  and 
the  procedure  as  a  whole  indicates  a  feeling  that  it  was 
not  solely  the  exercise  of  what  we  sometimes  call  "pure" 
or  "cold"  reason,  because  the  starting  point  depended  to 
some  extent  on  the  man.  Yet  after  this  point  has  been 
agreed  upon,  there  is  constantly  in  the  background  the 
suggestion  that  by  the  very  nature  of  the  logical  process, 
the  argument  must  develop  unswervingly  along  a  straight 
line;  even  the  answerer  is  compelled  to  answer  in  accord- 

46  cf .  Protag.,  334  d-336  d. 

47  cf .  ifiavT(p  diroKplveffOai  KaltiWy,  Phaedo,  100  d  9,  e  I. 

48  Protag.,  333  c. 

C  175  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

ance  with  his  previous  admissions.49  Thus  Socrates  seems 
to  have  felt  the  same  compulsion  of  reason  as  Parmenides, 
but  he  allows  for  the  human  fallibility  of  it  by  realizing 
that  the  starting  point  may  be  the  result  not  of  reason  but 
of  feeling  and  so  need  to  be  examined  separately  later. 
His  method  at  bottom  consists  in  what  we  should  call  a 
thorough  and  logical  working  out  of  a  particular  point 
of  view. 

(9)  The  starting  point  is  sometimes  naturally  and  im- 
plicitly brought  up  in  the  course  of  a  previous  argument 
or  conversation,  and  just  as  naturally  and  informally  ac- 
cepted; sometimes  it  is  explicitly  stated  and  formally 
recognized.  In  the  latter  case,  it  is  referred  to  as  the  hypo- 
thesis of  the  subsequent  argument.50  In  its  simplest  form, 
an  hypothesis  seems  to  be  a  proposition  that  was  agreed 
to  by  both  parties  with  the  understanding  that  it  would  be 
used  to  develop  a  certain  course  of  reasoning  or  establish 
a  conclusion  for  a  certain  problem.  The  necessary  feature 
of  it  was  merely  the  agreement  of  the  disputants  to  use  it ; 
hence  the  hypothesis  most  likely  to  be  accepted  would 
naturally  be  chosen.  It  is  perhaps  unwise  to  be  too  specific 
in  our  interpretation  of  so  spontaneous  a  thing,  but  we  may 
at  least  recognize  three  slightly  different  varieties.  First, 
an  hypothesis  might  be  a  desired  definition,  in  which  case 
the  preliminary  agreement  would  take  the  form,  not  of  an 
affirmation,  but  of  a  fundamental  question;  as,  for  ex- 
ample, "Let  us  ask  ourselves,  What  is  the  proper  function 
of  a  good  citizen*?"  "Agreed."51  Secondly,  it  might  be  a 
proposition  whose  truth  had  already  been  proved,  as  in 
the  Phaedo  (100  b)  where  the  hypothesis  is  the  existence 
of  Forms,  which  had  been  established  in  the  course  of  a 

49  Meno,  75  d  6. 

50  Phaed.,  100  a  3,  b  5,  101  d ;  Meno,  86  e  sqq. ;  Xen.,  Mem.,  IV,  6,  13. 

51  Xen.,  Mem.,  IV,  6,  14. 

r.  1763 


SOCRATES 

former  argument  (65  d,  e).  Thirdly,  it  might  be  a  pure 
assumption,  which,  after  its  consequences  had  been  thor- 
oughly worked  out,  would  itself  have  to  be  examined  in 
the  light  of  some  higher  principle.52  It  is  perhaps  needless 
to  say  that  these  varieties  are  not  consciously  differen- 
tiated in  any  account  of  Socrates;  and  the  word  always 
kept  its  fresh  and  wide  significance  of  any  starting  point 
formally  agreed  upon  for  an  argument. 

(10)  When  the  argument  concerns  a  quality  or  Form,  it 
is  proper  to  fix  the  definition  of  the  Form  before  attempt- 
ing to  draw  out  its  consequences.53  In  this  sense,  the  defini- 
tion might  be  regarded  either  as  the  hypothesis  toward 
which  an  inductive  process  was  directed  {terminus  ad 
quern),  or  as  the  hypothesis  from  which  the  subsequent 
deductive  process  started  (terminus  a  quo). 

If  now  we  cast  a  summary  glance  over  the  preceding 
analysis,  we  will  find  first  of  all  several  things  that  Aris- 
totle's statement  about  Socrates  should  not  lead  us  to 
infer.  We  are  not  to  suppose  that  Socrates'  arguments  were 
solely  inductive,  for  the  method  of  consequences  was 
plainly  deductive.  We  are  not  to  suppose  that  the  induc- 
tive arguments  were  inductive  in  the  strict  Aristotelian 
sense ;  they  were  inductive  in  the  way  that  modern  science 
is  inductive,  that  is,  by  proceeding  from  an  incomplete 
number  of  instances  to  a  generalization.  We  are  not  to 
suppose  that  Socrates  differentiated  between  induction 
and  deduction,  consciously  choosing  the  former  for  defini- 
tions and  the  latter  for  consequences;  he  knew  nothing  of 
formal  logic  and  merely  wanted  to  argue  things  out  in 
any  way  that  would  lead  to  the  truth.  And  finally,  it  is 
worth  saying  again  that  Socrates  was  not  content  with 

52  Phaedo,  100  d. 

53 Meno,  71   b  3;  86  d  4-e  2;  cf.  Symposium,   199   (first  treat  of  the 
nature  of  Love,  and  then  of  his  works). 

C  177  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

mere  definitions ;  he  wanted  definitions  in  order  to  get  true 
knowledge,  which  was  of  the  greatest  practical  concern. 
His  arguments  were  by  no  means  the  result  of  a  tight 
system  of  logic,  but  were  the  spontaneous  processes  of  a 
mind  constantly  boring  down  beneath  the  surface  appear- 
ances of  things,  and  convinced  that,  contrary  to  the  scep- 
tics, there  lay  there  knowable  verities  of  the  highest  value 
to  men. 

8.  We  have  already  had  occasion  to  note  in  passing  that 
Socrates  believed  philosophy  served  an  ethical  and  reli- 
gious purpose,  and  it  remains  for  us  now  to  examine  his 
understanding  of  the  ethical  impulse  in  general,  which 
I  take  to  be  his  third  contribution  to  philosophy.  His 
views  on  this  subject  rest  in  the  last  resort  on  his  concep- 
tion of  soul,  and  his  ethical  teaching  is  expressed  in  its 
most  general  form  as  an  exhortation  to  care  for  the  soul. 
That  he  held  peculiar  notions  with  regard  to  the  human 
spirit  is  to  be  inferred  from  the  Clouds  of  Aristophanes, 
and  the  testimony  is  valuable  as  indicating  also  that  he 
must  have  become  impressed  with  this  subject  at  least 
twenty-five  years  before  he  died.  Yet  for  the  comic  poet, 
Socrates  was  the  head  of  a  scientific  school,  offering  formal 
instruction  to  the  pupils  who  came  to  him.  I  think  we  must 
therefore  infer  that  Socrates'  dissatisfaction  with  natural 
science  was  connected  with  new  ideas  of  soul;  and  that 
he  may  have  begun  to  teach  these  new  ideas  of  soul  before 
he  took  up  his  mission.  The  mission  would  surely  have 
lent  itself  admirably  to  comic  treatment,  and  the  fact  that 
Aristophanes  does  not  mention  it  would  tend  to  show  that 
it  had  not  been  undertaken  when  the  Clouds  was  com- 
posed. In  the  Birds,  which  was  produced  nine  years  later 
in  414  B.C.,  there  is  a  reference  to  Socrates'  ^vxaycoyia, 
that  strange  intellectual  fascination  which  was  an  out- 

C  178] 


SOCRATES 

standing  feature  of  his  earnestness  in  conversation,  to 
which  Alcibiades  testified ;  and  we  know  that  such  earnest 
conversations  were  his  method  of  fulfilling  his  mission. 
Xenophon  and  Plato  also  picture  Socrates  as  going  about, 
conversing  with  everybody,  accompanied  by  his  disciples, 
and  engaged  in  converting  his  fellow-citizens.  What  he 
preached  was  the  care  of  the  soul,  a  form  of  expression 
that  was  also  known  to  Aeschines  of  Sphettus,  Antisthenes, 
and  Isocrates.  But  though  much  is  said  about  the  proper 
methods  of  exercising  this  care,  there  is  almost  no  direct 
information  on  Socrates'  conception  of  soul,  and  no  evi- 
dence at  all  that  it  was  considered  in  any  way  strange,  as 
the  treatment  of  Aristophanes  had  suggested.  This  would 
seem  to  indicate  that  Socrates  did  not  formulate  his 
thoughts  on  the  nature  of  soul  into  a  specific  theory,  but 
was  content  to  preach  his  ethical  doctrines  without  work- 
ing out  their  psychological  implications  systematically. 
At  the  same  time  it  appears  that  these  implications  were 
generally  acceptable  to  his  more  thoughtful  disciples  or 
there  would  have  been  more  comment  on  their  novelty; 
so  that  we  must  imagine  that  philosophic  circles  were 
generally  working  toward  some  new  conception  of  soul54 
and  that  Socrates'  ideas  on  the  subject  readily  became  part 
of  a  common  view.  Plato  apparently  took  over  his  Mas- 
ter's ideas  and  made  his  own  contribution  without  realiz- 
ing that  they  were  original,  and  Aristotle  in  his  De  Anima 
has  no  reference  to  a  Socratic  doctrine  on  the  subject.  This 
can  only  mean,  I  say,  that  there  was  no  separate  Socratic 
doctrine  of  soul,  but  that  the  psychological  implications 
of  his  ethical  theories  had  already  merged  into  the  ordi- 

54  Democritus  at  the  same  time  worked  out  a  view  of  the  soul  that  was 
in  many  ways  strikingly  similar  to  that  of  Socrates,  cf.  below,  p.  183,  n.  63. 

I  179  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

nary  philosophy  of  the  day.  These  implications,  however, 
are  of  such  importance  that  they  will  repay  investigation 
as  an  introduction  to  the  ethical  theories.55 

9.  There  were  current  during  the  lifetime  of  Socrates  sev- 
eral different  and  even  mutually  conflicting  views  of  the 
soul.  Probably  the  most  common  was  the  traditional 
Homeric  notion  of  a  bloodless,  unfeeling  shade  or  reflec- 
tion of  the  former  person,  something  that  apparently  did 
not  become  an  entity  until  life  was  extinct,  and  then  was 
in  most  cases  immediately  destroyed.56  But  in  the  sixth 
and  fifth  centuries  b.c.  this  vague  notion  was  supple- 
mented by  several  other  doctrines.  The  festival  of  Anthe- 
steria  and  some  of  the  mortuary  rites  would  seem  to  indi- 
cate a  very  ancient  belief  in  the  existence  of  the  shade 
within  or  about  the  grave,  but  probably  this  idea  was 
largely  a  dying  tradition  in  the  time  of  Socrates.57  There  is 
considerable  evidence  of  a  belief  that  all  shades  go  to 

05  For  Aristophanes  see  the  commentaries  on  Clouds,  94,  230,  and  Birds, 
1555.  Clouds,  137,  refers  to  the  miscarriage  of  a  thought;  but  this  need  not 
imply  fiaievrticri ,  which  was  practised  on  others,  while  the  thought  of  line 
137  was  the  speaker's.  Xen.,  Mem.,  I,  1,  16,  says  that  Socrates  always  aimed 
to  find  knowledge  which  would  make  men  Kakoiis  Kayadofc;  cf .  ttjv  tt)s  ^vx^ 
iiri/JLiXeiav  (I,  2,  4)  and  v  rrjs  dperrjs  iTrc^Xeia  (I,  2,  8).  The  same  language  is 
found  frequently  in  Plato's  Apol.,  e.g.  29  d,  31  b.  Aeschines  has  the  phrase 
tois  re  0atf\ois  t&v  dvdpwirajv  ical  ev  firide/uq.  iiupLeXetq.  eavrwv  oSaiv  (cf .  Hermann, 
De  Aeschinis  Socratici  reliquiis,  p.  22).  Antisthenes  uses  ^vy  ypvx^v  ircudeieiv 
(Mullach,  Frag.  Philos.  Graec,  II,  p.  292,  frag.  124),  and  Isocrates  tt)v  ttjs 
\f/vxys  imptXetav  (Antidosis,  304,  Blass).  Other  references  in  H.  Maier, 
Sokrates,  sein  Werk  u.  seine  geschichtliche  Stellung,  p.  333,  n.  3.  Professor 
Burnet's  "The  Socratic  Doctrine  of  the  Soul,"  in  Proc.  Brit.  Acad.,  1915-16, 
p.  235,  is  most  useful  and  scholarly,  but  I  think  his  rigid  classification  has 
prevented  him  from  making  proper  allowance  for  contamination  of  the 
various  views ;  and  it  is  inconceivable  that  the  Socratic  theory  should  have 
been  as  definite  and  as  original  as  he  suggests  without  exciting  later 
comment. 

56  cf.,  e.g.,  //.,  XXIV,  14;  Od.,  XXIII,  66,  107;  XXIV,  168.  cf.  ws  <pa<xiv  ol 
iroWol  dvdpwiroL  Phaed.,  80  d  10,  and  rb  twvitoW&p,  ibid.,  77  b  3. 

57  Harrison,  Proleg.,  chap.  11;  Mommsen,  Feste  d.  Stadt  Athen,  p.  390; 
Ridder,  Idee  de  la  Mort  en  Grece,  p.  51.  cf.  Phaed.,  81  d  1  :  irepl  A  (sc. 
/j-v^fiara)  Srj  ical  &<p07)  drra  \]/vx&v  (TKioeidij  (pavrdcrpLara. 

C  i8°3 


SOCRATES 

Hades,  a  place  under  the  earth.58  The  rationalistic  ten- 
dency is  represented  by  the  doctrine  that  the  soul  is  present 
during  life  as  air  or  breath,  and  goes  at  death  into  the 
upper  atmosphere.69  The  Eleusinian  Mysteries  must  have 
taught  a  still  different  idea  of  soul,  as  they  promised  some 
sort  of  happiness  after  death ;  but  what  it  was  we  do  not 
know.  The  Orphic  societies  maintained  that  the  soul  was 
divine  in  origin,  incarnated  as  a  punishment  for  some 
"ancient  woe,"  and  that  it  would  return  to  god  after  a 
period  of  purification;60  similar  views  were  held  by  the 
Pythagoreans  and  Empedocles.  Finally  Ionian  cosmology, 
as  developed  especially  by  Anaxagoras  and  Diogenes  of 
Apollonia  from  the  implications  of  Anaximenes  and  Hera- 
clitus,  had  taken  the  position  that  the  soul  was  part  of 
the  world  principle,  corporeal  like  it,  and  returning  at 
death  to  the  whole  from  which  it  had  been  separated.  It  is 
important  to  mark  both  the  extreme  diversity  of  these 
contemporaneous  views,  and  also  the  similarity  between 
the  Orphic  and  the  cosmological  doctrines. 

The  functions  of  sensation,  emotion,  and  thought  were 
commonly  attributed  to  the  body,  localized  in  the  region 
of  the  heart  or  midriff,  and  for  the  most  part  unconnected 
with  soul  except  in  philosophy.  Anaximenes  had  been  the 
first  to  assign  a  bodily  function  to  soul,  but  he  apparently 
had  thought  of  it  merely  as  the  life-giving  principle  of 
breath  in  men  as  in  the  world  at  large.  Heraclitus  had 
greatly  extended  the  idea  by  making  his  fire-soul  the  organ 

58  The  sepulchral  inscriptions  contain  the  phrases  ds  'Aldao,  els  'AlSa.  cf. 
the  black-figured  pottery  described  by  Furtwangler,  "Charon,  eine  altat- 
tische  Malerei,"  in  Archiv  f.  Religionszuissenschaft,  VIII  (1905),  p.  191 
(referred  to  by  Burnet). 

59  Epicharmus,  ap.  Plutarch  Consol.  ad  Apoll.,  no  A  DFV,  frag.  9,  cf. 
frag.  22;  Euripides  SuppL,  533;  Kaibel,  Epigram.  Graec,  nos.  21,  41,  225. 
cf.  Phaed.,  70  a.  •  * 

60  Herod.,  II,  81,  123;  Arist.,  De  An.,  I.  5,  410  b  28. 

I  181  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

of  directive  thought.  Parmenides  seems  to  have  adopted 
a  similar  notion,  as  he  held  that  thought  is  "that  of  which 
there  is  most"  in  the  body,  that  is,  it  is  the  preponderating 
element  light  or  dark;  he  does  not,  however,  say  that  it  is 
soul  and  we  are  left  to  infer  his  belief  from  his  probable 
connection  with  Pythagoreanism.  Empedocles  is  most 
interesting  because  he  seems  to  combine  the  Orphic  idea  of 
the  soul  as  "an  exile  and  a  wanderer  from  the  gods"  with 
the  scientific  view  that  thought  is  the  blood  around  the 
heart,  where  the  elements  are  most  evenly  mixed  by  Love, 
and  that  death  means  dissolution ;  but  we  have  no  right  to 
say  that  he  is  guilty  of  a  glaring  inconsistency  here,  for 
he  may  have  held  that  an  individual  soul  was  really  that 
microcosmic  Love  "implanted  in  the  frame  of  mortals," 
especially  at  the  heart,  and  that  it  returns  to  the  macro- 
cosmic  Love,  who  is  a  god,  when  the  elements  are  dissolved 
at  death.  Anaxagoras  believed  that  Mind,  the  principle  of 
movement,  enters  into  living  bodies,  and  Diogenes  of 
Apollonia  held  the  same  idea  of  Air.  All  these  philosophic 
systems  had  made  the  soul  corporeal,  a  part  of  the  world 
principle,  and  the  cause  of  life  in  the  body.  Moreover  in 
all  these  systems,  the  principle  had  directive  power  and 
was  considered  a  divinity,  and  in  some  of  them  certainly 
it  was  specifically  given  the  capacity  of  thought.  Hera- 
clitus  had  called  it  "the  thought  by  which  all  things  are 
steered  through  all  things";  Empedocles  had  claimed 
that  god  (Love)  was  "only  a  sacred  and  ineffable  mind 
flashing  through  the  world  with  rapid  thoughts";  and 
Anaxagoras  during  the  lifetime  of  Socrates  had  united 
cognitive  discrimination  with  physical  control  as  the  at- 
tributes of  Nous.  It  was  natural  for  such  a  keen-witted, 
inventive,  and  self-sufficient  people  as  the  Ionians  to 
identify  directive  power  with  thought.  For  philosophy 

[    182] 


SOCRATES 

then,  the  soul  was  part  of  the  material  principle  of  the 
world,  and  returned  to  it  at  death;  it  was  the  cause  of 
life  in  the  body  and  was  (sometimes  at  least)  believed  to 
have  the  capacity  of  thought.61 

The  extraordinary  fluidity  of  the  notion  of  soul  easily 
permitted  numerous  combinations  of  different  views  and 
thus  led  to  further  extensions  of  the  term.  It  had  been 
in  use  from  the  time  of  Homer  in  the  indefinite  sense  of 
life  or  existence — something  that  could  be  lost,  fought 
for,  or  kept.  It  was  employed  by  Herodotus  and  the  Tra- 
gedians to  signify  spirit,  courage,  or  emotional  disposi- 
tion. And  it  is  sometimes  found  with  such  secondary 
meanings  as  passion,  desire,  or  the  semi-conscious  state  of 
infancy  or  of  dreams.62  It  is  apparent  that  the  word  could 
be  used,  and  was  used,  for  almost  any  part  or  activity  of 
the  self;  but  it  never  seems  to  connote  the  whole  self,  as 
we  know  it,  until  we  come  to  the  Socratic  literature  and 
the  fragments  of  Democritus.  There  is  no  evidence  that 
either  Democritus  or  Socrates  knew  the  theories  of  the 
other,  though  they  developed  views  of  the  soul  that  have 
some  striking  similarities.63  We  may  therefore  suppose 

61  Anaximenes,  frag.  2,  DFV,  p.  21  ;  on  Heraclitus,  see  above,  pp.  58  ff. ; 
Parmenides,  frag.  16,  DFV,  p.  124;  Empedocles,  frag.  115,  1.  13,  frags.  105 
and  15,  DFV,  pp.  207,  202,  177,  and  above,  p.  91 ;  for  Anaxagoras,  Arist., 
De  An.,  I.  2,  405  a  13 ;  Diogenes,  frag.  5,  DFV,  p.  335. 

62  For  references  see  Liddell  and  Scott  s.v.  and  Burnet,  The  Socratic 
Doctrine  of  the  Soul.  Professor  Burnet's  method  seems  perverse.  He  first 
rules  out  of  court  the  use  of  the  word  for  courage  or  spirit,  and  then  says 
that  in  presocratic  literature  "the  one  thing  you  cannot  do  with  a  ^pvxn 
is  to  live  by  it."  But  see  Burnet  on  Heraclitus,  Gk.  Phil.  I,  p.  59.  And  when 
Herodotus  (V.  124)  says  that  Aristagoras  was  '/'fxV  oHk  &icpos ,  he  means  that 
the  spirit  of  his  whole  life  was  poor  or  timid ;  and  when  Creon  in  the  An- 
tigone 176  claims  that  you  cannot  know  a  man's  tyvxhv  T€  Ka^  4>p6v7]/Ma  Kal 
yvd/xrjv  before  he  is  proved  by  public  office,  the  poet  is  referring  to  the 
spirit  which  is  part  of  the  real  man.  But  whether  you  can  live  by  a  ^vxv 
or  not  is  not  the  point,  which  is  rather  how  much  of  the  inner  self  does 
ipvxh  cover. 

63  It  seems  to  me  that  in  Democritus,  as  in  Socrates,  the  Eleatic  dialectic 
acted  like  a  ferment  or  a  catalytic  on  the  mixture  of  natural  science  and 

C  1833 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

that  what  Socrates  did  in  Athens  was  to  put  together  the 
various  ideas  of  the  inner  person  in  a  rather  indefinite 
concept  that  included  what  we  mean  by  the  terms  con- 
sciousness, personality,  and  soul.  He  was  far  too  unsys- 
tematic to  elaborate  a  complete  psychology,  and  in  his 
later  years  at  least  he  cared  nothing  for  physiology,  so  we 
do  not  know  whether  he  localized  the  thinking  faculty 
at  all.64  But  he  had  quite  evidently  taken  over  the  cosmo- 
logical  view  of  soul,  possibly  from  Anaxagoras,  who,  he 
says,  interested  him  greatly  in  his  earlier  years;  and  he 
had  worked  in  with  this  notion  a  number  of  Orphic 
elements  (such  as  immortality,  purification,  and  reincar- 
nation), which  he  could  easily  have  learned  from  his 
Pythagorean  friends.  This  combination  was  made  possible 
by  his  understanding  of  incorporeal  force,  so  that  he  could 
hold  the  essence  of  the  Ionian  view  without  having  to 
believe  that  the  soul  was  corporeal.  But  he  so  extended 
the  application  of  this  composite  idea,  possibly  under  the 
influence  of  the  Philolaic  Harmony-soul  which  was  the 
constitutive  principle  in  the  individual,  that  it  took  on 
the  more  general  significance  of  character,  that  which 
is  most  real  in  a  human  being.65 

Pythagorean  mysticism,  which  influenced  each  of  them,  although  Democri- 
tus  was  far  less  susceptible  to  Pythagoreanism  than  Socrates  seems  to  have 
been.  For  Democritus  on  care  of  the  soul,  see  frag.  187 ;  on  soul  as  the  organ 
of  vovs,  \oy«rn6s,  (ppoveTv,  frags.  105,  187,  and  Theo.,  De  Sensu,  58;  as  direc- 
tive power,  frag.  159;  as  moral  character  and  personality,  frags.  170,  171, 
191.  Democritus  of  course  could  not  admit  personal  immortality. 

64  But  Phaedo,  96  b,  shows  that  he  knew  all  the  theories  on  the  subject. 

65  Owing  to  Socrates'  anthropocentric  interest,  we  must  expect  to  find 
the  cosmological  notion  of  soul  chiefly  in  its  microcosmic  aspect ;  never- 
theless in  Xen.,  Mem.,  I.  4.  17  (cf.  ibid.,  8)  Socrates  speaks  of  ttjv  ivTip  wclvti 
4>pbvr\<jiv,  and  <pp6t>7jcrts  is  an  attribute  of  the  soul,  Mem.,  I.  2.  53.  For  soul  as 
principle  of  life  in  the  body  see  e.g.  Phaedo,  94  b  4,  Mem.,  I.  4.  9.  and  13; 
as  divine,  immortal,  Phaedo,  106  e,  Mem.,  IV.  3.  14;  as  invisible,  Phaedo, 
79  b,  Mem.,  IV.  3.  14 ;  as  sentient,  conscious,  intelligent,  Phaedo,  83  c  3, 
Protag.,  313  c  7.  The  idea  of  soul  as  character  or  self  comes  out  in  the  turn 
of  many  phrases,  e.g.  Protag.,  312b  8,  31336;  Phaedo,  90  e  l  ;  Meno,  88 
c  1  ;  Mem.,  I.  2.  19-23. 

C  1843 


SOCRATES 

Furthermore,  insofar  as  cosmology  had  attributed 
thought  to  soul,  the  soul  was  a  conscious  thing;  but  since 
that  thought  was  preeminently  about  external  objects,  the 
soul  was  not  fully  self-conscious.  And  though  the  Eleatics 
and  some  of  the  Sophists  had  to  a  small  extent  turned  their 
attention  to  the  problem  of  thinking,  they  had  left  the 
soul  out  of  the  problem,  so  that  their  inquiry  was  what 
we  would  call  epistemological  rather  than  psychological. 
But  Socrates  both  attributed  thought  to  soul  and  also 
turned  that  thought  back  upon  itself,  so  that  soul  became 
for  the  first  time  a  truly  self-conscious  thing.  As  what  we 
mean  by  human  consciousness  really  includes  self-con- 
sciousness, we  may  say  that  Socrates  was  the  first  to  imply 
an  adequate  notion  of  consciousness. 

10.  With  this  idea  of  soul  there  naturally  went  certain 
ideas  or  beliefs  about  the  gods.  An  immortal  soul-person- 
ality seems  to  carry  with  it  the  idea  of  personal  divinity. 
But  there  was  no  precision  in  Socrates'  conception  of 
divinity,  and  of  course  the  question  of  one  god  or  many 
did  not  occur.  Such  expressions  as  6  #eo??  ol  Beoi,  to  delov, 
to  SaifiovLOv,  6  i£  apxys  ttolcov  dv$p(onov<;  and  others  of 
similar  character,  found  in  Plato's  and  Xenophon's  ac- 
counts of  their  Master,  indicate  how  vague  and  ill  defined 
the  idea  of  divinity  remained  in  his  mind.66  In  fact,  Plato 
represents  him  as  accepting  the  existence  of  the  gods,  yet 
holding  that  it  is  impossible  to  know  about  them  with 
certitude.67  Xenophon  has  him  argue  to  the  existence  of 
god  as  a  necessary  postulate  to  explain  creation  and  intelli- 
gence; but  these  arguments,  like  those  of  the  Phaedo  on 
immortality,  are  evidently  meant  to  produce  a  certain 

66  ApoL,  35  d,  41  d;  Phaedo,  62  c  2  and  7,  63,  80  a  3;  Mem.,  I,  4.  5  and 
13,  IV.  3.  14. 

67  ApoL,  40  c,  Phaedo,  62  b  5,  114  d  1;  cf.  ibid.,  85  c  2,  where  Simmias 
attributes  uncertainty  to  Socrates. 

r.  185  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

ethical  attitude  rather  than  constitute  a  logical  demon- 
stration.68 Both  Plato  and  Xenophon  deny  that  Socrates 
introduced  strange  divinities,  and  they  describe  him  as 
maintaining  the  traditional  beliefs  and  practices  in  regard 
to  oracles  and  sacrifices,  and  making  free  use  of  such 
popular  expressions  as  Hades  and  Fate.69  But  there  was 
one  point  on  which  he  would  suffer  no  shadow  of  doubt, 
and  that  was  that  the  gods  are  good  and  will  take  care 
of  good  men.70  Indeed  a  consideration  of  all  the  evidence 
suggests  that  it  was  just  the  presence  of  goodness  in  the 
world  that  gave  him  his  assurance  of  god.  For  our  own 
satisfaction  we  might  paraphrase  his  general  notion  of 
divinity  in  a  summary  fashion  as  follows :  real  knowledge 
comes  through  a  definition  of  Forms,  and  is  in  the  nature 
of  the  case  impossible  with  regard  to  the  gods;  but  we 
have  all  the  understanding  of  the  gods  that  we  need 
through  oracles  and  the  holy  myths  of  seers  and  prophets ; 
and  finally  it  seems  impossible  to  explain  the  presence  of 
goodness  and  its  equivalent  intelligence  in  the  world  save 
on  the  assumption  of  some  eternal  intelligent  principle 
of  Goodness. 

n.  Such  being  the  soul  and  its  relations,  Socrates 
preached  the  care  of  it  as  the  highest  duty  of  man.  The 
particular  kind  of  care  which  he  urged  is  brought  out  in 
the  doctrine  that  the  excellence  of  soul  is  knowledge,  with 
the  ancillary  proposition  that  knowledge  is  reminiscence. 
Plato,  Xenophon,  and  Aristotle  are  in  complete  harmony 
in  reporting  that  Socrates  held  virtue  to  consist  in  knowl- 

68  Mem.,  1.4.  2-19. 

69  Mem.,  I,  1.  2-9;  Anab.,  III.  1.  5-7;  Apol.,  20  e;  Phaedo,  107  a  l,  108 
a  2,  113  a  3,  1 15  a  5 ;  Gorg.,  512  e  3. 

70  Phaedo,  62  b  7  ;  Mem.,  I.  4.  18. 

C  1863 


SOCRATES 

edge.71  In  a  wide  sense,  this  proposition  was  old,  for  it  had 
formed  the  implicit  basis  of  cosmological  speculation;  but 
Socrates  so  enriched  the  meaning  of  its  two  terms  that  it 
acquired  an  entirely  new  significance. 

Of  course  "virtue"  is  a  bad  translation  of  dperrj;  our 
modern  materialism  has  tended  to  confine  the  idea  of 
virtue  to  those  sporadic  cases  of  extraordinary  kindness 
and  sweetness  that  seem  unnecessary  and  quite  ineffectual 
in  the  hurly-burly  of  a  predominantly  economic  existence. 
But  apery]  meant  simply  that  condition  in  which  an  indi- 
vidual was  at  his  natural  best,  the  excellence  which  is 
implied  by  natural  constitution.  The  apery]  of  a  horse  is 
that  respect  in  which  the  best  horse  excels  all  other  horses; 
the  apery]  of  a  person  is  that  excellence  which  is  the  full 
flower  of  a  personality.  Now  the  cosmologists  had  appar- 
ently held  that  human  excellence,  so  far  as  they  thought 
of  it,  lay  in  appreciation  of,  and  conformity  to,  the  rules 
that  govern  the  world ;  while  the  Sophists,  looking  only  at 
the  external  activities  of  man  as  a  member  of  society,  had 
defined  his  aperr]  as  efficiency  or  success  in  accomplish- 
ments— a  sense  in  which  the  Shakespearean  character 
Marina  employs  "virtue"  in  the  phrase:  "I  can  sing, 
weave,  sew,  and  dance,  With  other  virtues"  {Pericles 
IV.  6,  199).  But  Socrates,  believing  that  a  man  was  a  man 
only  because  he  had  a  soul,  claimed  that  virtue  was  excel- 
lence of  soul.  Inasmuch  as  the  activity  of  soul  was  prac- 
tically conditioned  by  social  existence  here  and  now,  he 
agreed  with  the  Sophists  in  defining  virtue  in  practical 
terms;  but  insofar  as  this  activity  proceeded  from  an 
immortal  entity  which  had  implications  beyond  its  pres- 

71  Plato,  Lack.,  144  d ;  Meno,  86  b ;  Protag.,  352-end ;  Xen.,  Mem., 
III.  9.  4,  IV.  6.  7;  Arist.,  Eth.  Nic,  VI.  13.  3  and  5;  cf.  Eth.  Eud.,  I.  5,  1216 
b6. 

C  187  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

ent  existence,  he  agreed  with  the  cosmologists  that  human 
excellence  must  in  the  last  resort  involve  the  relation  of 
man  to  the  supreme  power  of  the  world. 

We  have  already  seen  what  Socrates  meant  by  knowl- 
edge. On  the  subjective  side,  as  we  should  say,  it  was  an 
activity  of  soul  as  consciousness;  and  objectively  it  de- 
noted par  excellence  eternal  and  immutable  Forms,  causes, 
or  ideas.  It  was  differentiated  from  the  natural  science  of 
the  cosmologists  in  that  its  objects  were  matters  of  prac- 
tical experience,  and  from  the  wisdom  of  the  Sophists  by 
its  consideration  of  the  soul,  which  could  never  be  defined 
completely  by  its  external  manifestation  or  line  of  action. 

The  proposition  that  virtue  is  knowledge  may  therefore 
be  interpreted  by  this  modern  paraphrase :  a  human  being 
reaches  his  highest  capacity  in  that  exercise  of  soul  which 
is  known  as  the  rational  faculty.  Now  the  first  point  to 
be  noticed  in  understanding  this  doctrine  is  that  in  taking 
over  the  scientific  notion  of  the  soul,  Socrates  had  ap- 
parently accepted  the  dual  nature  of  psychic  activity,  as 
posited  especially  by  Anaxagoras;  that  is,  thought  was 
conceived  to  be  both  rational  discrimination  and  directive 
power.72  In  fact,  the  latter  was  assumed  to  be  merely  a 
property  of  any  and  all  ideas  in  the  soul,  and  the  prob- 
lem of  the  good  life  thus  became  simply  how  to  establish 
correct  ideas  in  the  soul.  There  was  no  question  of  will 
in  our  sense  at  all,  since  it  was  taken  for  granted  that  an 
idea  would  by  its  inherent  nature  issue  in  appropriate 
action.  This  point  of  view  is  not  a  peculiarity  of  Socrates, 
but  underlies  all  classical  Greek  ethics,  though  Plato  and 
especially  Aristotle  appreciated  that  the  matter  was  not 
quite  so  simple  as  it  appeared  to  Socrates.  The  conception 
of  the  will  as  a  separate  mental  faculty  is  probably  an 

72  cf.  e.g.  Phaedo,  80  a ;  Protag.,  352  and  below,  p.  190. 

C  188  3 


SOCRATES 

ancient  Jewish  religious  notion,  which  Christianity,  aided 
by  Roman  moralists,  has  perpetuated.73  One  cannot  escape 
the  suspicion  that  much  of  our  modern  thinking  on  the 
subject  involves  the  hypostatization  of  a  mental  function, 
and  we  ought  not  to  let  our  traditional  notions  blind  us 
to  the  fact  that  the  Greeks  avoided  this  pitfall,  though 
they  fell  into  others.  For  them  the  problem  of  conduct  was 
not  how  to  make  a  good  idea  effective  through  the  fiat  of 
some  executive  office  within  us,  but  how  to  give  the  right 
direction  to  our  whole  mental  life.  There  is,  they  would 
claim,  a  general  tendency  in  the  activity  of  every  mind, 
which  determines  the  choice  of  means  in  each  particular 
case.  The  difficulty  is  to  get  the  mind  tending  in  the 
proper  direction ;  once  that  is  done,  the  rest  will  take  care 
of  itself,  for  choice  of  means  will  then  be  raised  to  the 
intellectual  level  where  it  becomes  merely  the  discrimi- 
nation between  what  helps  and  what  hinders  the  ten- 
dency.74 That  is  solely  a  matter  of  knowledge,  and  virtue 
therefore  becomes  the  intellectual  discrimination  between 
what  is  good  and  what  is  bad  for  the  soul,  both  as  end  and 

73  It  would  seem  that  the  need  for  a  will  is  likely  to  be  felt  in  propor- 
tion to  the  recognition  of  moral  weakness  or  uncleanness.  Such  feeling  is 
a  commonplace  of  the  O.T. — the  Prophets  are  filled  with  it — and  it  passed 
over  into  Christianity  from  Judaism.  But  few  traces  of  such  a  feeling  are 
found  in  Greek  literature ;  the  Greeks  were  too  natural  to  be  weighed 
down  by  a  consciousness  of  sin.  Such  a  state  of  mind  as  is  expressed  in  the 
words  "For  the  good  that  I  would,  I  do  not ;  but  the  evil  which  I  would  not, 
that  I  do"  {Romans  7.  19)  was  quite  foreign  to  Greek  ideas;  even  the  doc- 
trine of  bloodguiltiness  and  the  mystic  fall  of  the  soul  have  an  occidental 
particularity  and  naturalness  about  them  that  are  wanting  in  the  general 
feeling  of  guiltiness  before  the  Lord.  Hebrew  and  Christian  ethical  thought 
is  dominated  by  a  god  of  righteousness  to  a  degree  quite  unknown  among 
the  classical  Greeks,  sin  and  righteousness  are  intelligible  only  by  final 
reference  to  God ;  Kanbv  and  SiKaioaivi]  can  exist  without  any  god  or  with 
gods  that  are  not  moral.  Religious  ethics  emphasizes  human  weakness  by 
contrast  with  divine  perfection. 

74  In  Protag.,  356  b,  the  control  of  conduct  is  reduced  to  a  skilful 
weighing  of  pleasures  and  pains ;  in  357  a  the  salvation  of  life  is  said  to 
depend  on  liriuriiixt)  in  the  form  of  a  fJ^TprjTiKrj  t^v  in  the  matter  of  a  right 
aXpevis  of  pleasure  and  pain. 

C  i89  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

as  means.  The  moral  life  is  thus  like  walking  along  a  road; 
the  one  thing  needful  is  to  get  a  person  going  in  the  right 
direction ;  if  he  meets  a  vehicle,  he  will  get  out  of  the  way 
without  having  to  be  convinced  that  he  ought  to  and  then 
making  himself  do  it. 

And  yet  we  must  admit  that  to  our  way  of  thinking, 
life  is  rarely  as  simple  as  Socrates  thought.  On  the  one 
hand,  if  we  adopt  James'  definition  of  will  as  "a  relation 
between  the  mind  and  its  'ideas,'  "  we  are  nearer  to  the 
Greek  conception  than  to  the  religious  dichotomy  of 
reason  and  will ;  but  we  should  have  to  say  that  Socrates 
underestimated  the  complexity  of  this  relation.  For  ex- 
ample, a  good  idea  may  be  inhibited  by  other  ideas  simply 
because  it  has  not  the  urgency  necessary  to  compel  atten- 
tion to  it.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  accept  the  German 
notion  of  will  as  the  expression  of  the  impulse  for  self- 
preservation  and  the  desires  that  arise  therefrom,  we  should 
have  to  say  that  Socrates  failed  to  take  proper  account  of 
the  relation  between  soul  and  body.  For  example,  an  idea 
may  be  inhibited  by  habits  or  subconscious  complexes.  But 
Socrates  was  apparently  satisfied  with  his  belief  that  the 
soul  was  divine,  that  it  was  akin  to  the  simple  and  un- 
changing, and  that  it  was  the  organ  of  ideas.75  He  was 
aware  that  the  soul  and  the  body  are  in  contact,  and  even 
that  the  latter  may  affect  the  former,  for  he  believed  that 
the  soul  was  dragged  down,  so  to  speak,  by  using  the  bodily 
organs  of  sensation.76  But  he  also  believed  in  a  pure  activ- 
ity of  thought,  as  for  example  in  the  reminiscence  of  ideas; 
and  he  underestimated  the  extent  and  the  complexity  of 
that  great  mechanism  of  imagery,  habit,  and  instinct, 
which  join  the  adult  mind  and  body.  His  exaggeration  of 

75  Phaedo,  79  b  ff. ;  Xen.,  Mem.,  IV,  3.  14. 

76  ibid.,  79  c,  d. 

C  190  ] 


SOCRATES 

the  thinking  faculty  should  be  considered  along  with 
Eleatic  claims  for  the  validity  of  thought  and  his  own 
assumption  of  the  existential  import  of  propositions  as 
the  uncritical  presuppositions  of  logic  in  its  initial  stages. 
12.  The  notion  of  a  pure  activity  of  thought  is  brought 
out  in  the  theory  that  knowledge  is  reminiscence.77  The 
mythical  embellishment  of  this  doctrine  has  obscured  its 
real  importance;  I  have  a  suspicion  that  it  was  probably 
the  most  original  and  the  most  fundamental  of  all  Socrates' 
contributions  to  philosophy.  We  may  approach  it  thus. 
From  the  ethical  point  of  view,  the  great  problem  is  to 
choose  what  is  good  for  the  soul ;  but  what  is  good  for  the 
soul  or  what  is  the  standard  of  goodness  ?  From  the  episte- 
mological  point  of  view,  the  problem  is  to  appreciate  those 
universal  Forms  or  ideas  which  are  the  essence  of  reality; 
but  how  can  you  find  these  Forms  if  you  do  not  know  what 
they  are?  On  the  methodological  side,  the  problem  is  to 
awaken  a  love  of  knowledge;  but  how  can  you  cause  men 
to  love  that  which  they  have  not  got4?  The  doctrine  of 
reminiscence  with  its  corollary  theories  attempts  to 
answer  these  questions,  roughly  speaking,  in  the  following 
way.  Since  we  have  certain  intellectual  standards  or  values 
which  do  not  come  from  sensible  experience  but  which 
we  apply  to  sensible  experience,  we  must  have  come  into 
the  world  with  these  standards,  that  is,  we  must  have 
known  them  in  some  previous  state  of  existence.  But  this 
implies  (l)  that  there  are  such  standards,  (2)  that  they 
can  be  known,  (3)  that  the  knowledge  of  them  is  latent 
in  every  mind.  The  first  of  these  propositions  shows  that 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  Goodness,  pure,  simple,  absolute, 

77  Meno,  80  d ;  Phaedo,  72  e.  One  should  compare  the  legend  that  Pytha- 
goras remembered  what  happened  in  his  previous  incarnations,  DFV,  p.  24, 
1.  25,  and  Empedocles'  claims  in  frags.  117-19,  DFV,  6.  208. 

r.  191 n 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

by  itself;  and  it  is  by  directing  all  activity  toward  this  true 
Goodness  that  the  soul  does  what  is  good  for  itself.  From 
the  second  proposition  it  follows  that  knowledge  is  really 
the  process  of  recognizing,  or  becoming  fully  conscious  of, 
these  standards.  And  the  third  thesis  suggests  that,  since 
knowledge  in  the  strict  sense  is  the  process  of  becoming 
fully  conscious  of  what  you  already  partially  have,  love 
of  knowledge  is  simply  appreciation  of  self. 

Before  leaving  the  subject,  there  are  a  few  particular 
points  that  need  further  exposition.  In  the  first  place,  the 
fact  that  Socrates  drew  the  wrong  conclusion  from  the 
existence  of  universal  standards  ought  not  to  obscure 
the  real  value  of  his  main  position  from  us.  He  was  on  the 
track  of  a  priori  knowledge.  He  explained  this  knowledge 
by  the  hypothesis  of  previous  existence  of  the  knower,  a 
notion  which  rouses  the  instant  opposition  of  our  instinc- 
tive feelings.  But  his  assertion  of  an  activity  of  mind  and 
a  quality  of  thought  that  are  not  explicable  in  terms  of 
sense  experience  still  remains  after  the  mythical  setting 
has  been  torn  away. 

Secondly,  the  standards  or  universals  are  frequently 
dismissed  as  "hypostatized  concepts,"  a  smacking  mouth- 
ful to  the  evident  gratification  of  the  superior  modern 
author.  But  the  matter  is  not  so  easily  disposed  of.  The 
Forms,  as  we  have  seen,  were  primarily  causes — Goodness 
causes  good  things  to  be  good,  and  Beauty  makes  things 
beautiful.  But  in  so  far  as  they  are  causes,  they  are  no  more 
hypostatizations  than  gravitation,  magnetism,  energy, 
attraction,  and  other  modern  scientific  concepts  of  force. 
Socrates  did  not  hold  that  the  mind  made  the  Forms  in 
its  previous  existence,  but  that  it  came  to  know  them  as 
existent  objects  of  knowledge.  What  we  do  have  a  right 
to  ask  him  is  how  he  can  identify  a  universal  standard, 

L*  192  ] 


SOCRATES 

value,  or  principle  with  a  cause  operating  in  the  physical 
world;  but  that  raises  the  problem  of  the  objective  validity 
of  all  thought,  and  he  was  probably  wise  to  treat  of  it  in 
a  myth. 

Again,  since  he  believed  that  the  Forms  or  causes  really 
existed,  becoming  conscious  of  them  was  the  establishment 
in  the  mind  of  things  that  exist ;  and  a  definition  had  an 
existential  import,  not  because  the  mind  made  ideas  into 
things,  but  because  the  thing  was  really  existent  in  thought 
before  it  was  thought  of.  Thought  fixed  reality  only 
insofar  as  reality  was  thought. 

And  again,  since  learning  was  the  process  of  becoming 
fully  conscious  of  ideas  already  latent  in  the  mind,  a 
friend  might  be  of  aid  by  way  of  suggestion  or  irritation, 
but  he  could  not  give  you  ideas  which  you  did  not  already 
have.  Hence  the  proper  method  of  teaching  was  not  the 
lecture,  which  was  an  attempt  to  put  one  mind  into  an- 
other mind, — an  impossible  piece  of  violence  from  the 
Socratic  point  of  view, — but  a  gradual  eliciting  or  awak- 
ening of  the  dormant  idea,  such  as  could  only  be  effected 
by  questioning.  The  teacher  was  thus  a  questioner  and 
the  taught  an  answerer,  and  the  whole  procedure  was  no 
more  than  conversation,  SiaX  6/0-1/07,  in  a  special  aspect.  It 
was  not  even  necessary  to  assume  that  the  teacher  knew 
more  than  the  learner,  and  their  roles  might  be  reversed ; 
Socrates  himself  steadfastly  disclaimed  any  special  knowl- 
edge, and  he  interpreted  his  mission  as  the  task  of  con- 
vincing his  fellow  Athenians  of  their  ignorance.  He 
proceeded  to  do  this  by  means  of  discussions,  and  Socratic 
dialectic  always  retained  this  simplicity  of  conception; 
it  certainly  never  was  stereotyped  in  formal  theories  of 
methodology  or  metaphysics,  such  as  it  became  in  the 
systems  of  Plato  and  Aristotle. 

C  193  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

13.  We  ought  now  to  see  that  Socrates  was  not  guilty  of 
a  circular  argument  when  he  said  the  soul  should  strive 
toward  Goodness,  and  then  spoke  of  Goodness  as  what  is 
good  for  the  soul.  Goodness  was  to  his  mind  a  reality 
independent  of  all  souls  but  capable  of  being  partially  ap- 
prehended and  appropriated  by  any  soul.  The  real  and 
final  dissatisfaction  which  we  are  likely  to  feel  with  Soc- 
rates' position  arises  from  the  fact  that  he  never  succeeds 
in  denning  the  content  of  that  Goodness.  And  this  illus- 
trates a  more  general  deficiency  in  his  philosophy  as  a 
whole,  namely,  the  vagueness  of  the  concepts  in  which  it 
ended.  There  were  two  main  aspects  of  his  thought,  the 
ethical  and  the  epistemological ;  in  the  former,  he  urged 
that  a  proper  regard  for  the  soul  demanded  that  all  actions 
be  directed  toward  an  end  which  was  conceivable,  intelli- 
gible, but  he  does  not  enable  us  to  define  that  end  posi- 
tively; on  the  epistemological  side,  he  maintained  that 
knowledge  was  a  group  of  pure  conceptual  "reals,"  but 
again  he  never  settles  on  any  definite  content  for  these 
Forms.78  It  was  not  that  he  was  sceptical,  I  think,  for  his 
whole  method  assumes  the  possibility  of  knowledge,  and 
his  irony  was  always  humorous.  Rather  he  was  personally 
too  diffident  in  his  own  intellectual  capacity  to  go  further, 
and  also  he  conceived  his  own  particular  mission  to  be  a 
clearing  away  of  false  notions  and  the  smug  self-satisfac- 
tion that  remains  content  with  them.  In  the  course  of  that 
clearing  away  there  emerged  certain  positive  implications 

78  cf.  Zeller,  Socrates  and  the  Socratic  Schools,  p.  123  (Reichel)  :  "Just  as 
his  speculative  philosophy  stopped  with  the  general  requirement  that 
knowledge  belonged  to  conceptions  only,  so  his  practical  philosophy 
stopped  with  the  indefinite  postulate  that  actions  must  correspond  with 
conceptions."  For  the  function  of  negative  dialectic,  see  Grote,  Plato,  I, 
pp.  241  ff.  This  aspect  of  Socrates  has  been  overlooked  by  most  recent 
writers. 

C  194  3 


SOCRATES 


of  a  general  and  indefinite  nature,  which  he  maintained 
with  all  the  skill  and  vigor  of  his  vivid  personality  and  his 
extraordinary  mind.  But  the  systematic  development  of 
these  implications  he  left  to  his  successors. 


CHAPTER    XI 

THE  ATOMISTS 

1 .  We  have  endeavored  to  trace  the  course  of  the  idealistic 
tendency  to  the  point  where  it  brought  forth  a  separate 
systematic  philosophy.  We  must  now  go  back  to  cos- 
mology again  and  follow  the  development  of  the  opposite, 
materialistic  disposition  to  an  analogous  point.  We  may 
think  of  the  Eleatic  position  as  the  crux  in  the  evolution 
of  Greek  reflective  thought;  this  school  suggested  the  im- 
possibility of  finding  a  principle  of  unity  in  the  phenomena 
of  sense,  and  at  the  same  time  they  asserted  the  necessary 
implication  of  unity  for  reason.  We  may  think  of  the 
systems  of  Empedocles  and  Anaxagoras  as  unsatisfactory 
and  unsuccessful  attempts  to  straddle  the  Eleatic  fence  by 
forcing  phenomena  in  their  plurality  under  some  kind  of 
unifying  forces.  That  first-rate  minds  among  the  Greeks 
did  not  continue  these  attempts  at  compromise  bears  testi- 
mony to  the  general  acumen  of  their  intellectual  circles. 
Instead,  their  philosophy  split  up  into  the  two  types 
mentioned  above,  each  type  being  worked  out  in  a  simple, 
direct,  and  self-consistent  system.  The  idealistic  type, 
gaining  its  impetus  from  the  prevalent  humanistic  move- 
ment but  based  ultimately  on  the  Eleatic  doctrine  of  a 
conceptual  reality,  was  an  endeavor  to  explain  the  world 
by  an  appeal  to  the  nature  of  mind  or  intelligence  with  its 
unifying  faculty.  The  materialistic  type,  which  was  really 
a  continuance  of  the  original  cosmological  impulse  but,  as 

c  196: 


THE  ATOMISTS 

a  separate  tendency,  formed  a  negative  reaction  to  Eleatic 
denials  of  phenomena,  was  an  attempt  to  explain  the  world 
by  a  frank  acceptance  of  the  plurality  of  matter  as  the  ulti- 
mate reality.  Moreover  the  atoms  of  Leucippus  andDemoc- 
ritus  as  well  as  the  Forms  of  Socrates  and  Plato  were  in  dif- 
ferent ways  lineal  descendants  of  the  Eleatic  What-is,  and 
neither  would  have  been  possible  without  the  Eleatic  de- 
velopment of  pure  thought.1  Furthermore,  though  the 
humanistic  movement  may  be  regarded  as  more  clearly 
interwoven  among  the  strands  of  Idealism,  yet  it  will 
appear  that  the  same  movement  profoundly  influenced 
the  course  of  Materialism,  which  thus  close  to  its  incep- 
tion faced  the  problem  of  explaining  intelligence  in  terms 
of  matter.  And  finally  we  must  note  that,  as  the  Idealism 
of  Socrates,  its  founder,  was  relieved  of  its  narrow  limita- 
tion to  human  affairs  by  the  broader  system  of  his  suc- 
cessor, Plato,  so  the  cosmological  restriction  of  Leucippus, 
the  founder  of  pluralistic  materialism,  was  immediately 
given  up  in  the  broader  system  of  his  successor,  Democritus. 
2.  The  proper  appreciation  of  Atomism  is  rendered 
extraordinarily  difficult  by  our  ignorance  of  the  historical 
circumstances  of  its  authors,  especially  in  regard  to  chron- 
ology which  is  here  of  the  greatest  importance.  We  are 
reduced  to  a  consideration  of  probabilities,  but  the  follow- 
ing account  seems  the  most  likely.  Both  Aristotle  and 

1  As  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  pluralism,  Melissus  had  argued :  "if 
things  were  many,  they  would  each  have  to  be  such  as  I  say  the  One  is" 
(frag.  8,  2,  DFV,  p.  147).  Leucippus  had  accepted  this  conclusion,  and  his 
atom  was  the  Eleatic  One  in  all  save  size  and  immobility.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  Socratic  idea  was  a  development  of  the  Pythagorean  Form  (cf. 
above,  pp.  163,  164)  in  the  direction  of  the  Eleatic  One;  it  was  unchange- 
able, eternal,  indestructible,  intelligible — an  intellectualized  One,  as  it 
were.  Both  atom  and  Form  were  frankly  unperceivable,  and  could  be  plausi- 
ble only  on  the  Eleatic  assumption  of  the  validity  of  reason  as  distinguished 
from  the  senses — a  fact  which  Leucippus  probably  understood  hardly  at  all, 
Democritus  partially,  and  Socrates  quite  completely. 

C  197  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

Theophrastus  make  Leucippus  the  founder  of  Atomism;2 
the  denial  of  the  existence  of  any  such  person,  first  made 
by  Epicurus,  must  therefore  be  thrown  out  of  court.3 
Leucippus  was  a  native  of  Miletus,  but  probably  went  to 
Elea,  where  he  was  for  a  time  a  member  of  the  school  of 
Parmenides  and  Zeno;4  it  would  appear  most  unlikely 
that  he  should  have  gone  from  there  to  Abdera,  or  that 
he  ever  was  in  Abdera.5  It  seems  best  to  suppose  that 
Democritus,  who  was  a  native  of  Abdera,  in  the  course 
of  his  extensive  travels  met  Leucippus,  became  his  pupil 
for  a  time,  and  brought  back  to  Abdera  a  copy  of  his 
book.6  Democritus  undoubtedly  knew  and  was  influenced 
by  his  fellow-citizen  Protagoras,  though  there  is  no  direct 
testimony  to  this  effect;  he  is  said  to  have  met  Philolaus 
also  and  to  have  become  acquainted  with  the  Pythagorean 
philosophy.7  On  the  whole,  it  is  improbable  that  he  visited 

2  Arist.,  Met.  I.  4,  985  b  4;  Theo.  ap.  simpl.,  Phys.,  28,  4,  DFV,  p.  344. 

3  Diog.  X.  13,  DFV,  p.  343,  2.  The  mistake  of  Epicurus  may  be  perhaps 
explained  by  the  fact  that  the  Atomist  School  produced  a  number  of  works 
which  were  soon  formed  into  a  corpus  and  attributed  to  Democritus,  like 
the  medical  corpus  attributed  to  Hippocrates  of  Chios.  For  a  full  discussion 
see  Zeller,  II,  p.  837,  n.  4,  and  RP,  185  b. 

4  Theo.,  loc.  cit.;  Burnet,  p.  382. 

5  In  the  first  place  it  is  difficult  to  discover  any  plausible  motive  to  take 
him  to  Abdera.  He  certainly  could  not  have  been  drawn  thither  by  Prota- 
goras, as  there  is  not  a  suggestion  that  he  was  influenced  by  Humanism ; 
that  is  the  difference  between  him  and  his  pupil  Democritus.  Furthermore 
if  he  had  ever  had  Democritus  as  his  pupil  in  Abdera,  Democritus  could 
hardly  have  been  regarded  as  the  founder  of  the  school  there.  That  he  was 
so  regarded  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  the  writings  of  the  school 
seem  to  have  gone  out  under  the  name  of  Democritus,  and  that  Aristotle 
speaks  of  ol  irepl  ArjfiSKpirov  (De  Coelo,  III.  6,  305  b  l)  but  not  of  ol  irepl 
AetJKnrirov.  We  may  suppose  that  Leucippus  was  called  an  Abderite  by  cer- 
tain authors  (Diog.  IX,  30,  DFV,  p.  342)  because  the  founder  of  Atomism 
was  confused  with  the  founder  of  the  Abderite  school  which  taught 
Atomism. 

6  For  the  evidence  that  Leucippus  wrote  a  book,  see  Zeller,  II,  p.  838  n. 

7  Glaucus  of  Rhegium  (a  contemporary)  and  Apollodorus  of  Cyzicus 
(a  later  member  of  the  School)  ap.  Diog.  L.,  IX,  37,  DFV,  p.  351.  This  appears 
to  be  confirmed  by  certain  elements  in  the  system  of  Democritus,  e.g.  the 
use  of  crKTJvot  for  the  body,  the  healing  of  the  soul  by  wisdom,  the  compari- 

L  1983 


THE  ATOMISTS 

Athens.8  When  he  returned  to  his  native  city,  he  founded 
a  school  which  taught  the  Atomist  doctrine  much  broad- 
ened and  enriched  by  contact  with  Pythagorean  science 
and  the  new  Humanism.9  All  things  considered,  it  is 
easiest  to  imagine  Leucippus  as  a  younger  contemporary 
of  Anaxagoras,  and  Democritus  as  active  during  the  last 
quarter  of  the  fifth  century  and  the  first  ten  or  fifteen 
years  of  the  next.10 

3.  The  core  of  the  Atomist  cosmology  can  be  stated  in  a 
few  fundamental  propositions  given  by  Aristotle  as  fol- 
lows: "That  which  in  the  proper  sense  is  (real)  is  com- 
pletely full ;  but  that  which  satisfies  this  condition  is  not 
a  single  thing,  but  an  infinite  number  of  things  that  are 
invisible  on  account  of  the  smallness  of  their  bulk.  These 
things  move  in  the  void — for  there  is  a  void — and  when 
they  come  together,  they  produce  generation;  when  they 
disperse,  they  cause  destruction."  In  its  simplest  terms, 
the  world  is  innumerable  atoms  moving  in  an  infinite 
void.11 

son  of  atoms  with  letters  of  the  alphabet  (given  by  Aristotle,  but  likely 
to  be  Democritean  in  origin),  the  emphasis  on  shape-size. 

8  See  above,  p.  108,  n.  1. 

9  The  evidence  for  the  school  is  very  meager,  but  several  "Democriteans" 
are  named,  e.g.  Nessus,  Metrodorus,  Anaxarchus,  Apollodotus,  Diotimus. 
cf.  Diels  "Ueber  die  alt.  Philosophenschulen  d.  Griech.,"  in  Philosophische 
Aufsatze  Ed.  Zeller  gezuidmet. 

10  The  chronological  evidence  is  given  by  Zeller  in  his  notes.  Burnet  (Gk. 
Phil.,  p.  194)  says :  "if  Democritus  died,  as  we  are  told,  at  the  age  of  ninety 
or  a  hundred,  he  was  in  any  case  still  living  when  Plato  founded  the 
Academy"  (about  387-6  B.C.). 

11  Arist.,  De  Gen.  et  Corr.,  I.  8,  325  a  8.  Aristotle  attributes  these  propo- 
sitions specifically  to  Leucippus,  but  he  makes  it  plain  (ibid.,  324  b  35) 
that  both  Leucippus  and  Democritus  started  from  the  same  cosmological 
postulates.  Aristotle  appears  thoroughly  versed  in  the  physical  doctrines 
of  Atomism,  speaking  of  its  various  doctrines  with  a  confidence  born  of 
much  study  of  the  original  documents,  and  distinguishing  the  work  of 
Leucippus  and  Democritus  at  certain  points.  He  may  have  been  especially 
interested  in  Democritus  as  a  fellow  Ionian  of  the  North,  as  Professor 
Burnet  suggests. 

C  199  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

Besides  these  explicit  doctrines  there  seem  to  have  been 
two  general  presuppositions  which  underlay  the  Atomist 
cosmology,  though  we  cannot  be  sure  how  definitely  they 
were  conceived  by  Leucippus  and  Democritus.  The  first 
was  the  Eleatic  axiom  that  no  thing  comes  into  being  out 
of  another  thing;  Aristotle  refers  this  axiom  to  Democri- 
tus, but  we  must  believe  that  it  was  at  least  implied  by 
Leucippus.12  The  second  was  the  axiom  that  motion  is 
possible  only  in  a  void;  this  was  also  an  Eleatic  conten- 
tion, the  acceptance  of  which  Aristotle  refers  to  Leucippus 
in  language  which  does  not  indicate  plainly  whether  the 
Atomist  philosopher  merely  suggested  it  by  implication 
or  expressly  stated  it.13  There  cannot  be  the  slightest 
doubt,  however,  that  both  of  these  presuppositions  influ- 
enced the  thought  of  the  founders  of  this  philosophy. 

If  we  now  apply  these  assumptions  to  the  previous  bare 
conception  of  atoms,  it  will  follow  that  the  atom  is  un- 
created and  indestructible;  and  that,  having  no  empty 
space  in  itself,  it  will  not  permit  internal  movement  and 
is  therefore  unchangeable  per  se.  It  is  also  physically 
indivisible,  but  is  theoretically  divisible  because  it  has 
bulk.  Again,  all  atoms  have  the  same  substance,  but  they 
differ  in  shape,  which  probably  included  the  notion  of  size. 
Externally  atoms  are  further  distinguishable  by  their 
position  in  the  world  and  in  the  groups  or  masses  of  which 
they  form  part.  Finally  the  atoms,  infinite  in  number, 
allow  of  infinite  differences  in  shape  and  position.14 

12  Arist.,  Phys.,  III.  4,  203  a  33. 

13  Arist.,  De  Gen.  et  Corr.,  I.  8,  325  a  26 ;  Phys.,  IV.  6.  213  b  5. 

14  Besides  the  previous  references,  Arist.,  De  Coelo,  III.  4,  303  a  5;  Met., 
VII.  13,  1039  a  9;  Phys.,  VIII.  1,  251  b  15;  De  Gen.  et  Corr.,  I,  7,  323  b  10; 
Simpl.,  Phys.,  82,  l.  There  is  a  looseness  of  expression  and  probably  of 
conception  in  regard  to  the  differentiae  of  atoms.  In  Met.,  I.  4,  985  b  15, 
Aristotle  says  Leucippus  and  Democritus  held  that  the  real  (atoms)  differed 
PD07M?  Kal  SiaOiyx)  KalTpoiry  fxdvov,  and  he  translates  these  Ionic  terms  into  the 
Attic  cxv/^t  Td|«,  and  64<rif.  The  first  obviously  means  shape  or  form,  and 

C  200  ] 


THE  ATOMISTS 

At  first  view  it  might  appear  that  the  Void  was  merely 
the  opposite  of  the  Full,  for  it  was  that  which  existed 
where  the  full  did  not  exist ;  but  the  opposition  ends  here, 
and  there  was  no  active  relation  or  interaction  between 
the  two.  The  void  was  not  mere  nothingness,  for  it  ex- 
isted15 and  was  infinite  in  extent,16  as  the  atoms  were 
infinite  in  number.  It  was  empty  space,  and  the  first  really 
empty  space  conceived  in  Greek  philosophy;  but  it  was 
probably  not  imagined  as  geometrical  space  or  mere  ex- 
tension. On  the  other  hand  it  was  not  air,  which  Empedo- 
cles  and  Anaxagoras  had  shown  to  be  corporeal.  It 
existed  between  atoms  but  it  did  not  prevent  atoms  from 
touching;  yet  it  was  in  all  things  that  were  compounded 
of  atoms,17 

Motion  was  not  conceived  as  opposition  or  interaction 
between  the  two  principles,  the  Full  and  the  Void;  and 
though  it  was  not  carefully  described  by  either  Leucippus 
or  Democritus,  to  judge  from  the  remarks  of  Aristotle, 
yet  it  was  probably  assumed  as  an  original  property  of 

applies  to  all  atoms ;  it  appears  to  include  the  notion  of  size  (cf .  the  same 
dual  notion  in  Philolaus,  above,  p.  139,  and  Aristotle's  description  of  atoms 
as  numbers).  The  second  and  third  terms  must  mean  arrangement  in  groups 
and  position  in  the  world,  respectively,  and  apply  only  to  atoms  which  are 
in  groups  or  worlds ;  they  are  secondary,  external,  unessential  differentiae 
as  compared  with  shape.  The  fact  that  shape-size  is  the  only  primary 
differentia  can  be  inferred  also  from  the  fact  that  the  atoms  were  called 
Idtai  or  eidv  (Burnet,  p.  336,  n.  5)  and  dpiOfiol.  Yet  the  essential  and  the 
secondary  characteristics  are  put  together  without  distinction,  and  they 
must  go  back  to  the  Atomists  on  account  of  the  Ionic  terms.  This  ought  to 
suggest  that  the  Atomists  were  not  so  definite  and  clear  in  their  concepts 
as  Zeller  and  some  other  modern  commentators  try  to  make  out.  Further- 
more the  fact  that  these  terms  must  be  those  of  Democritus  at  least  and 
that  they  are  the  only  differentiae,  according  to  Aristotle,  indicates  that 
weight  was  not  regarded  as  even  a  secondary  characteristic  of  atoms. 

15  Arist.,  Met.,  I.  4,  985  b  4;  Simpl.,  Pkys.,  28,  13,  DFV,  p.  345  (represent- 
ing Theophrastus)  ;  Plut.,  Adv.  Col.,  4,  2. 

16  Arist.,  De  Coelo,  III.  2,  300  b  8. 

17  ibid.,  I,  7,  275  b  29;  Pkys.,  III.  4,  203  a  19;  De  Gen.  et  Corr.,  I.  8,  325 
b  29 ;  Met.,  IV.  5,  1009  b  27. 

I  201    ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

atoms.18  Such  a  doctrine,  as  Professor  Burnet  remarks, 
would  be  a  return  from  the  Empedoclean  and  Anaxago- 
rean  postulates  of  force  to  the  earlier  idea  of  motion  as 
an  inherent  and  natural  attribute  of  things.  Apparently 
the  first  motion  of  the  atoms  was  simple,  unqualified 
movement  in  the  void.  It  is  possible  that  each  atom  was 
supposed  to  have  had  a  motion  as  peculiar  to  it  as  its 
shape  was;  but  probably  even  such  a  statement  imputes 
to  the  Atomist  system  greater  definition  than  it  really  had. 
In  any  case  it  appears  almost  certainly  unjustifiable  to 
attribute  to  Leucippus  and  Democritus  a  belief  that  the 
original  motion  was  a  fall  through  space.  What  Aristotle 
says  is  that  the  atoms  were  endowed  with  motion;  if  this 
theory  was  unsatisfactory  to  him  and  is  more  unsatisfac- 
tory to  modern  commentators,  it  does  not  follow  that 
it  was  so  to  the  Atomists.  What  seem  to  us  "the  immediate 
and  necessary  corollaries  of  their  own  hypotheses"19  may 
not  have  seemed  either  immediate  or  necessary  to  the 
original  authors.  It  is  enough  for  us,  without  spilling  any 
more  ink  on  this  ancient  controversy,  to  accept  Aristotle's 
statement  that  the  Atomists  started  their  cosmology  with 
atoms  moving  in  a  void. 

18Arist.,  Met.,  XII.  2,  1069  b  22;  1071  b  31;  1072  a  6.  When  Aristotle 
says  of  the  Atomists  (Phys.,  VIII.  9,  265  b  23)  :  S16.  5t  rb  xevbv  KiveiaOai  <pa<rtt>, 
we  must  accept  the  interpretation  of  Simplicius,  Sia  tov  Kevov  el/covros  Kal  fir] 
avTirvirovvTos.  The  void  was  merely  the  negative  condition  of  motion. 

19  Zeller,  II,  p.  877.  Zeller  held  that  the  atoms  had  weight  and  that  the 
original  motion  was  a  fall  through  space.  I  have  already  spoken  about 
weight  (above,  p.  200,  n.  14).  The  fall  is  for  Zeller  primarily  a  necessary 
deduction  from  the  weight,  but  he  also  refers  to  Simpl.,  Phys.,  319  a  and 
Theophrastus  De  Sensu,  71.  The  former  passage,  however,  gives  the  view  of 
ol  irepi  Arjfj^Kpirov,  that  is,  the  followers  of  Democritus,  and  it  may  also 
involve  a  confusion  with  the  Epicureans;  moreover  it  does  not  mention  a 
fall  of  atoms,  but  only  their  movement  in  accordance  with  their  weight, 
which  might  be  "up"  for  the  lighter  atoms.  The  second  passage  is  not  a 
description  of  the  Atomist  views  but  merely  an  argument  of  Theophrastus, 
similar  to  that  of  Arist.,  De  Coelo,  I.  7,  275  b  29,  both  of  which  references 
imply  that  the  Atomists  did  not  give  the  atoms  a  single  motion,  as  they 
should  have. 

C  202  2 


THE  ATOMISTS 

4.  From  this  beginning  the  Atomists  had  to  deduce  the 
cosmological  process.  The  best  account  of  their  theory  on 
this  point,  given  by  Diogenes  but  based  on  an  epitome 
of  Theophrastus,  may  be  paraphrased  and  simplified  thus. 
A  number  of  moving  atoms,  colliding  and  becoming  en- 
tangled with  one  another  and  separate  from  the  rest, 
produced  a  vortex,  in  the  course  of  which  atoms  of  similar 
shape  came  together,  the  finer  being  pushed  outwards  by 
the  others  which  congregated  in  a  mass  at  the  center ;  and 
as  the  process  continued,  the  central  mass  gained  fresh 
atoms  from  the  outside  and  kept  losing  the  finer  atoms 
from  itself,  until  it  formed  a  compact  body  like  the  earth. 
Other  such  masses  were  dried  and  ignited  by  the  swiftness 
of  their  motion;  they  are  the  heavenly  bodies.20 

There  is  no  use  attempting  to  evaluate  the  Atomist 
mechanics  in  terms  of  modern  science,  because  the  latter 
involves  the  concepts  of  mass  and  force,  which  were 
unknown  to  Leucippus  and  Democritus.  And  such  an 
attempt  would  rest  on  a  fundamental  misconception  of 

20  Diog.,  IX.  31  ff.,  DFV,  p.  343.  This  passage  is  said  to  contain  "certain 
Epicurean  extracts  from  the  Great  Diakosmos  (Burnet,  p.  339),  a  book  by 
Leucippus.  cf.  DFV,  p.  347,  par.  24;  Usener,  Epicurea,  p.  37,  7,  and  frag. 
308.  This  seems  by  no  means  certain,  and  even  if  it  is  true,  the  phraseology 
is  admittedly  Epicurean.  In  particular,  the  phrase  Kara.  airorop.7iv  4k  rod 
aireipov  seems  especially  doubtful.  Would  airorop,tf  be  the  proper  word  for 
Leucippus  to  describe  the  natural  and  mechanical  congregation  of  a  certain 
number  of  atoms  apart  from  the  rest"?  And  the  atoms  were  supposedly 
dirtipot.  in  number  and  shape,  but  would  Leucippus  have  combined  them 
into  an  tiireipov,  a  whole  *?  What  then  is  rb  drreipovl  if  we  take  the  phrases 
of  the  passage  literally,  Leucippus  would  have  started  with  an  infinite 
whole  composed  of  corporeal  bodies  on  the  one  side,  and  a  mighty  void 
on  the  other  side;  then  many  of  the  bodies  were  cut  off  (by  what1?)  from 
the  infinite  whole  and  borne  away  into  the  void  to  form  worlds.  This  is 
just  the  sort  of  nonsense  the  Epicureans  made  of  Atomism.  Compare 
the  very  different  statement  of  Democritus  himself  in  frag.  167,  DFV, 
p.  416.  Democritus  used  rb  irav  to  signify  shortly  the  indescribable  condition 
of  things  at  the  beginning.  Then  Aristotle  employed  rb  irai>,  rb  tiireipop, 
irava-irep/iia  loosely  and  sometimes  misleadingly  of  the  same  condition.  And 
the  Epicureans  in  turn  seem  to  have  misinterpreted  Aristotle  to  suit  their 
own  purposes. 

C  203  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

the  Atomist  system,  which  was  not  scientific  in  the  sense 
of  being  formed  by  generalization  from  observed  phe- 
nomena. A  moment's  reflection  on  the  details  will  be 
enough  to  indicate  the  impossibility  of  arriving  at  them 
by  means  of  observation  and  experiment;  bodies  which 
are  too  small  to  be  perceived  and  yet  have  physical  prop- 
erties, and  a  void  which  exists  but  can  by  no  means  be 
demonstrated — these  are  certainly  not  the  ideas  that  an 
actual  experience  of  nature  gives.  Nor  is  there  the  slight- 
est evidence  that  they  were  the  final  hypotheses  considered 
necessary  in  order  to  explain  newly  discovered  facts,  for 
the  Atomists  adduced  no  new  facts  that  had  not  been 
explained  by  the  previous  systems  of  cosmology.  There  is 
only  one  reason  which  could  have  led  Leucippus  and 
Democritus  to  propound  a  new  theory  of  nature,  and  that 
was  a  belief  that  the  current  theories  were  logically  un- 
tenable. This  fresh  theory  was  offered  therefore  as  a  better 
explanation  of  old  facts,  and  its  value  in  the  minds  of  its 
authors  must  have  rested  on  the  logic  of  its  explanation. 
This  supposition  is  in  keeping  with  the  tradition  which 
represents  Atomism  as  primarily  a  logical  reaction  to  Ele- 
aticism;  and  such  an  interpretation,  taken  together  with 
the  backward  character  of  the  Atomist  astronomy,  sug- 
gests that  this  cosmology  was  not  primarily  based  on 
scientific  investigations. 

5.  Perhaps  the  most  significant  feature  of  Atomism  is  the 
way  in  which  its  authors  explained  the  cosmological  process 
without  assuming  new  metaphysical  or  physical  forces 
to  produce  the  successive  stages.  We  might  analyze  the 
account  of  Diogenes,  though  it  presents  certain  difficulties 
of  arrangement,  as  follows.  Having  started  with  atoms 
moving  in  a  void,  they  had  to  deduce  conglomerations  of 
these  atoms  to  form  the  celestial  bodies;  they  did  this  by 

t  2°4  3 


THE  ATOMISTS 

means  of  physical  collision  and  entanglement,  two  purely 
mechanical  causes  inherent  in  the  original  nature  of  atoms. 
Having  got  conglomerations,  they  had  to  deduce  rotation ; 
this  they  did  by  means  of  interference,  a  mutually  modi- 
fied movement  by  contact,  and  again  a  purely  mechanical 
causation.  Having  a  rotating  mass,  they  had  to  derive 
a  qualitative  distribution  of  atoms  into  the  separate 
natural  genera  or  elements ;  this  they  accomplished  appar- 
ently by  a  sifting  and  localizing  of  physically  similar 
atoms,  in  the  course  of  which  the  finer  were  squeezed  out 
through  the  interstices  between  the  coarser  which  were 
then  left  in  a  spherical  mass;  this  whole  operation  was 
again  conceived  as  quite  mechanical,  being  the  result  of 
resistance  to  pressure.  Finally,  having  numbers  of  such 
bodies  in  motion,  the  Atomists  had  to  account  for  the  light- 
ing up  of  some  of  them ;  this  they  effected  by  supposing 
that  such  bodies  were  dried  up  and  ignited  by  the  swift- 
ness of  their  course  through  the  air,  which  may  possibly 
mean  friction,  but  in  any  case  is  an  operation  as  mechan- 
ically conditioned  as  the  previous  ones. 

At  each  of  these  cosmological  stages,  a  modern  reader 
acquainted  with  the  concepts  of  contemporary  science  may 
raise  questions  or  objections.  For  example,  have  the  Atom- 
ists, in  allowing  for  changes  of  motion  by  collision,  implied 
resilience,  which  is  based  on  elasticity  of  materials,  which 
in  turn  would  suggest  that  an  atom  might  at  least  tem- 
porarily become  altered  in  form*?  Or  again,  in  their  account 
of  the  vortex,  have  they  not  overlooked  centrifugal  force, 
which  is  presumed  to  be  present  in  all  curvilinear  motion'? 
Or,  finally,  do  they  mean  to  employ  weight  as  a  physical 
circumstance  in  the  selective  process  within  the  vortex,  by 
means  of  which  the  larger  atoms  are  brought  to  the  center^ 
Such  interrogations,  however,  can  be,  as  I  have  previously 

C  205  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

stated,  but  of  momentary  interest  to  us,  for  we  cannot 
estimate  the  system  of  Leucippus  and  Democritus  in  the 
scales  of  modern  science.  What  we  can  do  is  to  admire  the 
rational  consistency  of  the  cosmology  as  a  whole.  If  we 
use  the  word  "force"  in  its  ancient  Greek  sense  as  a  sep- 
arate thing  causing  a  particular  movement,  it  would  be 
true  to  say  that  the  Atomists  from  beginning  to  end  of 
their  cosmology  assume  no  new  forces.  At  each  stage 
of  the  process  an  action  is  set  up  by  qualities  in  the  atoms, 
which  were  present  but  latent  from  the  beginning.  A 
quality  became  operative  and  effective  in  a  certain  condi- 
tion, that  is,  when  put  in  conjunction  with  certain  other 
qualities  that  were  rendered  effective  by  previous  condi- 
tions. And  every  quality,  condition,  or  cause  was  of  the 
same  physical  and  mechanical  nature.  Now  since  these 
causes  could  not  have  been  observed  producing  these 
effects,  they  must  have  been  used  by  analogy  from  known 
instances  of  similar  character  or  else  they  must  have  been 
posited  from  known  qualities  of  matter.  The  admirable 
consistency  of  the  atomist  system  therefore  rests  in  the  end, 
first,  on  the  fact  that  all  its  causes  were  of  a  uniformly 
physical  character,  that  is,  they  were  supposedly  observed 
qualities  of  matter;  and  second,  that  all  its  movements 
were  equally  mechanically  conditioned,  that  is,  they  were 
supposedly  observed  activities  of  matter. 

6.  If  we  ask  why  such  a  system  as  this  is  more  satisfac- 
tory to  us  than  that  of  Anaximenes,  for  example,  or  wherein 
lay  the  progress  that  had  taken  place  in  Greek  philosophy 
since  the  first  Ionians  propounded  their  theories,  we  are 
likely  to  answer  that  Leucippus  and  Democritus  stuck 
more  carefully  to  observed  facts.21  But  on  second  thought 

21  Gomperz,  I,  p.  352,  speaks  of  "Democritus  with  his  marked  bias  to 
empiricism,"  but  that  is  wrongly  phrased.  There  can  be   no  doubt  that 

:  206  ] 


THE  ATOMISTS 

such  an  answer  obviously  needs  revision.  Take  the  Atomist 
doctrine  of  atoms  colliding,  bunched,  setting  up  a  vortex, 
and  regrouped  mechanically  into  the  natural  elements 
like  the  sea;  and  lay  it  down  by  the  side  of  Anaximenes' 
theory  of  Air  condensing  successively  into  cloud,  water, 
earth,  and  stones.  As  explanations  of  a  past  unobserved 
process,  both  doctrines  are  equally  theoretical  and  ana- 
logical. So  far  as  the  Atomist  analogy  had  any  basis  of 
observed  fact,  this  could  hardly  have  been  more  than  such 
ordinary  phenomena  as  eddies  of  wind  or  water,22  and  rivers 
running  down  into  the  sea ;  so  far  as  Anaximenes  had  any 
similar  basis,  it  must  have  been  the  familiar  phenomena 
of  evaporation,  mists  and  alluvial  deposits.  It  would  be 
rash  indeed  to  say  that  of  these  factual  considerations  that 
of  the  Atomists  was  more  legitimate  as  a  basis  for  analogy 
and  generalization  than  that  of  Anaximenes;  air  in  a 
sense  does  become  cloud,  and  rivers  do  run  into  the  sea. 
But  if  we  could  temporarily  slough  off  our  modern  scien- 
tific information,  it  would  be  quite  as  difficult  to  imagine 
water  as  smoothly  joined  particles  as  to  think  of  stones 
as  condensed  air.  Moreover  air  was  as  corporeal,  physical, 
and  natural  as  atoms,  indeed  much  more  so,  as  the  atoms 
could  not  be  subjected  to  observation  but  were  at  that  time 
merely  logically  necessitated  entities.  Furthermore  the 
choice  of  air  as  the  most  real  thing  was  probably  made  on 
grounds  less  metaphysical  and  more  factual  than  the  choice 
of  atoms;  Anaximenes  could  at  least  see  clouds  forming 
in  the  air,  while  Leucippus  could  not  see  atoms  doing  any- 

Democritus  surpassed  most  of  his  predecessors  and  contemporaries  in 
wealth  of  knowledge,  as  Zeller  says ;  but  that  does  not  make  him  an  em- 
piricist— indeed,  his  own  doctrine  was  that  sense  experience  was  bastard 
knowledge.  And  it  is  impossible  to  show  that  his  observations  alone  could 
have  led  to  his  cosmological  doctrine.  In  general  we  would  do  well  to 
read  as  few  of  our  -isms  into  early  Greek  philosophy  as  possible. 
22  cf.  frags.  164,  167. 

C  207  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

thing.  But  the  choice  of  both  principles  undoubtedly 
rested  mainly,  if  not  entirely,  on  logical  grounds;  Anaxi- 
menes'  quantitative  differentiation  of  the  principle  was 
more  consistent  and  logically  simpler  than  the  forcing  of 
opposite  bodies  into  a  whole,  as  Anaximander  had  done, 
and  the  Atomists  were  led  to  the  invention  of  atoms  by 
the  logic  of  Parmenides  and  the  criticism  of  Zeno.  Again, 
the  positing  of  one  aboriginal  thing  or  of  an  infinite  num- 
ber of  aboriginal  things  must  have  been  determined  in 
either  case  by  metaphysical  bias;  and  with  our  philoso- 
phers holding  the  one  position,  and  our  scientists  the 
other,  he  would  be  bold  indeed  who  would  attempt  to 
judge  between  Anaximenes  and  Leucippus  on  that  score. 
Furthermore,  each  successive  stage  of  creation  was  equally 
corporeal  and  natural  in  both  Anaximenes  and  the  Atom- 
ists; from  Air  through  the  intermediate  steps  to  stones, 
and  from  atoms  moving  as  individuals  to  atoms  moving 
as  sea  or  trees,  there  was  no  place  where  an  extraneous 
force  (like  Mind  or  Love)  was  needed.  In  either  system, 
present  change  was  the  continuous  result  of  movement 
which  was  a  condition  of  the  original  thing  or  things,  or, 
in  modern  terms,  motion  was  a  property  of  things  for 
Anaximenes  as  well  as  for  Democritus. 

It  is  in  the  kind  of  movement  or  type  of  causation  that 
the  systems  of  Anaximenes  and  of  the  Atomists  seem 
to  differentiate  themselves  most  patently  to  a  modern 
mind,  and  that  in  two  respects.  First,  the  Milesian  pictures 
creation  as  a  series  of  transformations  of  an  original  sub- 
stance, while  the  Atomists  regarded  it  as  continual  re- 
arrangement of  original  untransformed  particles.  Sec- 
ondly, though  neither  system  explained  causation  except 
to  assert  that  the  first  body  or  bodies  did  actually  move 
and  kept  on  moving,  yet  the  Atomists  (with  the  exception 

C  208  n 


THE  ATOMISTS 

of  the  original  atomic  movement)  always  provided  a  set 
of  coexistent  conditions  from  which,  as  a  whole,  succeed- 
ing events  were  produced,  while  Anaximenes  had  his  prin- 
ciple change  of  its  own  motion  without  the  influence  of 
any  external  environment;  in  the  latter,  causation  was 
spontaneous  generation,  in  the  former  it  was  coexistence 
and  sequence  in  external  arrangement. 

In  both  the  first  and  the  second  of  these  points,  our 
modern  scientific  theories  again  are  stumbling  blocks  to 
a  proper  comparison  of  the  ancient  doctrines.  Our  chem- 
ists and  physicists  show  us  atoms  and  electrons  arranged 
in  different  patterns  in  different  materials,  but  they  know 
of  no  transformations  of  one  substance  (except  in  certain 
radio-active  elements)  into  a  qualitatively  different  sub- 
stance; hence  we  are  drawn  to  Atomism  by  a  kind  of 
inevitable  scientific  affinity.  Yet  let  us  imagine  ourselves 
as  Plato  hearing  for  the  first  time  about  the  new  theory 
from  the  North.  We  might  ask  if  atoms  were  known  to 
science,  and  we  should  find  that  scientists  knew  of  no  such 
thing;  an  atom,  we  should  be  informed,  was  a  philosoph- 
ical idea,  invented  to  avoid  the  logical  disaster  of  Elea- 
ticism.  But  this  mere  lack  of  scientific  verification  would 
not  distress  us.  Then  as  a  matter  of  pure  metaphysics, 
would  there  be  any  choice  between  an  infinite  number  of 
material  abstractions23  gathering  themselves  into  various 
objects,  and  a  substance  which  changed  itself  into  various 
objects?  Probably  as  a  metaphysician,  and  certainly  as  a 
logician,  you  would  prefer  the  latter  hypothesis,  if 
anything. 

23  if  they  had  been  immaterial,  Plato  might  have  been  interested  in  them. 
He  had  practically  come  to  the  conclusion,  afterwards  stated  by  Aristotle, 
that  matter  by  itself  cannot  move ;  a  cause  of  motion  must  therefore  be 
of  a  higher  nature  than  the  things  moved.  Hence  Plato  would  consider  the 
possibility  of  Love  and  Strife  {Sophist,  242  d),  and  of  Nous  (Pkaedo,  97  c)  ; 
but  with  materialism  as  such  he  will  not  even  dally. 

C  209  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

Again,  as  regards  the  second  point,  the  system  of 
Democritus  appeals  to  us  because  it  seems  to  involve  the 
modern  notion  of  inertia;  a  Democritean  atom  did  not 
change  itself,  but  its  circumstances  were  altered  only 
from  interference  with  other  atoms.  Yet  the  principle 
of  inertia  was  never  stated  by  the  Atomists,  and  there  is 
every  reason  to  believe  that  Leucippus  and  Democritus 
knew  nothing  about  it.  If  they  made  change  a  matter  of 
interference  from  without,  that  was  not  due  to  any  scien- 
tific discovery  that  a  body  tends  to  preserve  its  motion 
unless  acted  on  by  some  external  force,  but  simply  to  the 
fact  that  they  commenced  with  a  plurality  of  bodies,  and 
since  they  did  not  assume  any  external  force,  they  had  to 
produce  change  by  mutual  interference.  The  appearance 
of  scientific  causality  is  therefore  superficial  and  results 
solely  from  their  pluralistic  hypothesis.  Both  the  system 
of  Anaximenes  and  that  of  the  Atomists  were  materialis- 
tic; but  the  former  was  monistic,  the  latter  pluralistic. 
The  former  had  to  make  change  self-change  of  one  body, 
because  it  had  only  one  body  to  diversify;  the  latter  had 
to  make  change  interference  of  many  bodies,  because  it 
had  many  bodies  to  concentrate  in  groups.  Atomism 
attracts  us  in  this  respect  because  it  has  happened  to  be 
experimentally  corroborated ;  but  again  if  one  were  Plato 
and  had  no  experimental  verification  of  either  theory, 
would  there  be  any  logical  preference  as  between  spon- 
taneous generation  and  mutual  interference,  given  the 
monistic  or  pluralistic  hypothesis?  No,  I  do  not  believe 
there  was  any  more  reason  for  Plato  to  be  interested  in 
the  cosmology  of  Atomism  than  in  the  cosmology  of 
Anaximenes;24  nor  do  I  believe  that  Leucippus  "answered 

24  Plato  never  mentions  Democritus.  cf .  Zeller,  "Platos  Mittheilungen 
uber  friihere  und  gleichzeitige  Philosophen,"  Archiv  V  (1892).  But  it  is 
very  difficult  to  suppose  that  Plato  did  not  know  anything  about  Democri- 

C  21°  3 


THE  ATOMISTS 

the  question  of  Thales"  in  a  more  satisfactory  way  than 
Anaximenes  had  done.  In  the  present  state  of  physical 
science,  pluralistic  materialism  may  be  more  in  vogue  than 
monistic  materialism,  but  I  should  not  say  that  material- 
ism must  necessarily  be  pluralistic.  Indeed,  with  the 
latest  electrical  theory  of  matter  and  the  difference  be- 
tween mass  and  energy  approaching  the  vanishing  point, 
there  is  a  distinct  possibility  of  a  monistic  natural  science. 
But  in  any  case,  if  the  answer  of  Leucippus  appears  to  us 
more  complete  than  the  answer  of  Anaximenes,  it  is  so  by 
reference  to  our  present  scientific  theories,25  and  not  be- 
cause of  any  inherent  logical  superiority. 

7.  These  general  conceptions  of  Atomism,  however,  en- 
abled its  authors  to  make  one  very  significant  contribution 
to  the  general  theory  of  nature,  and  that  lay  in  their 

tus.  All  the  activity  of  Leucippus  and  at  least  most  of  Democritus'  had 
passed  before  Plato  founded  the  Academy ;  hence  even  if  Leucippus  did 
not  found  the  school  at  Abdera  but  Democritus  met  him  on  his  travels  and 
brought  the  Atomist  doctrine  home,  yet  the  school  was  probably  established 
by  Democritus  before  Plato  founded  the  Academy ;  and  in  the  forty  years 
between  that  date  and  Plato's  death,  reports  of  the  Atomist  School  must 
have  come  to  Athens  in  the  then  state  of  travel  and  intercommunication 
(cf.  the  Athenian  activity  at  Amphipolis  nearby,  and  the  presence  in 
Athens  of  Protagoras  from  Democritus'  own  city,  and  of  Aristotle  from 
Stagira).  But  if  Plato  was  acquainted  with  Atomism,  that  acquaintance  by 
itself  would  be  no  compelling  reason  for  his  mentioning  it  in  one  of  his 
Dialogues;  he  does  not  mention  Anaximander,  Anaximenes,  Archelaus,  or 
Diogenes  of  Apollonia,  and  he  was  not  interested  in  the  history  of  cos- 
mological  speculation.  Certain  specific  doctrines  of  some  of  his  predecessors 
did  concern  him  as  having  a  particular  bearing  on  his  own  problems ;  but 
I  have  tried  to  show  that  the  cosmology  of  Atomism  need  not  have  inter- 
ested him  and  that  his  silence  on  the  subject  ought  to  cause  no  surprise. 
With  regard  to  the  ethical  theory  of  Democritus,  there  is  a  possibility  that 
Plato  had  it  in  mind  in  Rep.  IX,  583  b,  Phileb.  43  d,  though  several  emi- 
nent authorities  have  denied  this.  But  it  is  more  remarkable  that  Aristotle, 
who  knew  the  Atomist  physics  well,  should  have  been  absolutely  silent  on 
Atomist  ethics.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that  both  Plato  and  Aristotle  mention 
their  predecessors  only  when  it  suits  a  particular  purpose ;  and  they  (not 
we)  must  be  the  sole  judges  of  that. 

25  When  Professor  Burnet  (p.  349)  says  that  the  greatness  of  Leucippus 
"consisted  in  his  having  been  the  first  to  see  how  body  must  be  regarded 
if  we  take  it  to  be  the  ultimate  reality,"  he  is  passing  final  judgment  on 
early  Greek  philosophy  from  the  present  point  of  view  of  physical  science. 

[211  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

development  of  the  idea  of  mechanical  regularity.  In  the 
course  of  previous  speculation,  we  have  seen  a  succession 
of  attempts  to  formulate  the  processes  of  nature  in  terms 
of  nature  alone,  attempts  to  comprehend  the  natural  as 
purely  natural;  and  we  have  also  seen  how  such  efforts 
wer^^Jfa^isjTatedby  IT^unoTamentallv^  anthropomorphic 
point  of  view,  an  almost  instinctive  feeling  that  what  has 
independent  power, of  movement  must  in  some  way  be 
intelligent  and  therefore  supernatural.  Empedocles  had 
made  a  naturalistic  system  out~oT~the  four  natural  ele- 
ments, and  then  had  felt  constrained  to  put  on  top  of 
them  the  anthropomorphic  figures  of  Love  and  Strife 
to  set  them  in  motion.  Anaxagoras  had  reared  a  naturalis- 
tic structure  and  then  had  set  over  it  a  supernatural  Mind. 
There  had  thus  arisen  a  tendency  to  take  intelligence  out 
of  nature  and  make  for  it  a  separate  reality,  a  tendency 
that  we  noticed  also  in  the  Sophistic  opposition  between 
nature  and  law,  and  that  culminated  in  the  philosophy  of 
Plato  and  Aristotle.  But  there  was  also  an  opposite  ten- 
dency, which  attempted  to  consolidate  intelligence  and 
nature.  It  would,  I  think,  be  true  to  say  that  early  Ionian 
science,  in  spite  of  its  endeavor  to  appreciate  the  natural, 
had  only  succeeded  in  assimilating  natural  activity  to 
human  intelligent  activity.  It  might  also  be  said  that 
Philolaus  had  coordinated  nature  and  intelligence  in  Har- 
mony by  means  of  a  mathematical  formula  of  all  activity, 
including  knowledge. 

In  the  Atomists,  we  find  the  third  possibility  realized, 
that  of  assimilating  intelligence  to  nature.  We  shall  have 
to  notice  the  Atomist  view  of  soul  later;  it  is  necessary 
here  only  to  say  that  their  theory  of  mental  activity  was 
made  to  fit  their  theory  of  natural  motion  rather  than 
vice  versa.  The  absolute  regularity  observable  in  nature 

t  212  ] 


THE  ATOMISTS 

was  expressed  by  Leucippus  in  the  phrase:  "No  thing 
comes  into  being  unnecessarily,  but  all  things  arise  from  a 
cause  and  by  necessity" ;  and  it  may  be  admitted  at  once 
that  this  concept  more  or  less  successfully  dominates  the 
whole  Atomist  system.  Its  significance  can  best  be  brought 
out  by  comparing  it  with  the  idea  of  regularity  in  Anaxi- 
menes.  There  are  two  main  points  of  contrast  between 
them.  In  the  first  place,  regularity  is  not  ex  post  facto 
adjustment  of  a  balance,  a  zig-zag  whose  median  points 
are  in  a  straight  line ;  but  it  is  a  straight  line  of  sequences 
with  no  possibility  of  deviation.  In  the  second  place, 
natural  law  is  not  a  unitary  compulsion  exercised  in  spas- 
modic acts,  or  even  a  prescriptive  power,  such  as  is  found 
in  an  imperfect  form  in  Heraclitus  and  Parmenides;  it  is 
rather  this  latter  concept  developed  by  the  omission  of 
all  human  character  into  a  blind  universal  necessity,  oper- 
ating spontaneously  in  every  case.  The  law  was  not  pre- 
scriptive but  descriptive;  the  verbs  of  Atomism  are  nor- 
mally in  the  past  tense.  Science  was  therefore  the  record 
of  past  or  present  events  as  necessarily  conditioned  and 
produced  by  preceding  events.  Now  if  we  mean  by 
Naturalism  a  doctrine  that  extends  present  scientific 
knowledge  of  the  parts  of  the  physical  universe  to  the 
universe  as  a  whole,  and  excludes  from  the  whole  whatever 
is  not  demonstrated  in  some  part,  then  it  would  be  true 
that  Atomism  was  the  first  and  only  pure  Naturalism  in 
early  Greek  philosophy,  because  it  was  the  only  system 
that  made  the  universe  as  mechanical  as  its  physical  parts 
are  observed  to  be. 

8.  Let  us  now  leave  the  Atomist  cosmology  and  turn  our 
attention  to  that  part  of  the  system  which  dealt  with 
organic  nature.  And  here  we  must  first  note  that  not  only 
Democritus  but  also  Leucippus  was  apparently  interested 

C  213  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

in  these  problems,  which  had  been  increasingly  prominent 
in  philosophy.  To  Leucippus  are  attributed  the  doctrines 
that  the  objects  of  sense  perception  exist  by  convention 
(vofLco)  and  not  by  nature,  and  that  perception  occurs  by 
means  of  effluent  images  from  the  objects  perceived.26  But 
it  was  Democritus  who  first  developed  a  consistent  human- 
istic side  to  the  Atomist  doctrine ;  and  the  fact  that  he  did 
so  is  an  indication  that  he  was  conscious  of  the  same  prob- 
lems that  confronted  Socrates  and  that  he  belonged  to 
the  same  period  of  philosophy. 

Both  Leucippus  and  Democritus  approached  the  prob- 
lem of  soul  from  the  normal  Ionic  point  of  view,  holding 
that  it  was  material  like  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  that 
it  had  the  double  capacity  of  knowing  and  causing  mo- 
tion.27 Of  course  too  on  the  Atomist  cosmology,  soul  could 
not  be  an  ultimate  principle ;  each  soul  was,  like  everything 
else,  a  temporary  collection  of  atoms.  More  specifically, 
it  was  the  fiery  atoms,  which  were  probably  regarded  as 
smooth  and  round  and  fine  so  that  they  could  penetrate 
all  composite  bodies.  They  existed  not  only  in  human 
beings  but  everywhere  where  there  was  warmth,  especially 
in  the  air.  They  were  the  most  mobile  atoms  and  they 
caused  movement  by  imparting  their  own  motion.28 

Democritus  was  thus  able  to  make  a  distinction  between 
a  human  soul  and  a  human  body,  but  that  distinction  lies 
merely  in  the  difference  of  material.  Soul  is  as  substantial 
as  body,  but  may  be  distinguished  from  it  by  the  quality 
of  its  substance.  Furthermore  the  soul  cannot  be  in  any 
true  sense  an  entity  or  even  a  unified  principle,  except 

26  Aet.  IV.  9,  8,  DFV,  p.  349,  32  (cf .  Burnet,  p.  347)  ;  Aet.  IV.  13,  1  and 
Alexander,  De  Sensu,  24,  14;  56,  12,  DFV,  p.  348,  29.  All  these  statements 
probably  come  ultimately  from  Theophrastus. 

2,7  Arist.,  De  An.,  I.  2,  403  b  29;  405  a  8;  I.  3,  406  b  15.  The  doctrine  that 
the  soul  knows  is  not  definitely  ascribed  to  Leucippus. 

28  Arist.,  De  Respir.,  4,  471  b  30,  DFV,  p.  370;  De  An.,  I.  3,  406  b  15. 

C  214  3 


THE  ATOMISTS 

insofar  as  atoms  of  the  same  kind  obey  the  same  mechan- 
ical laws.  It  was  merely  all  the  atoms  of  a  particular  qual- 
ity, that  are  found  in  a  particular  body;  such  atoms, 
Democritus  held,  existed  in  all  parts  of  the  body,  but  were 
localized  especially  in  the  brain,  heart,  and  liver.  Hence 
in  reality  soul  and  body  are  merely  abstractions;  all  we 
can  say  is  that  in  any  particular  entity,  the  spherical  fiery 
atoms  may  be  considered  together  as  soul,  the  rest  as 
body.  And  the  same  might  be  affirmed  of  the  world  as  a 
whole.29 

Let  us  frankly  admit  that  we  cannot  think  out  the 
Democritean  theory  of  the  nature  and  functions  of  soul 
without  becoming  involved  in  grave  difficulties  which 
do  not  seem  to  have  been  felt  by  the  author.  It  will  per- 
haps facilitate  our  understanding  of  the  theory  if  we 
interpret  the  soul  as  the  principle  of  motion  in  the  body, 
and  consider  its  functions  as  various  types  of  movement. 
This  movement  was  generically  the  motion  of  certain 
atoms  in  the  body;  but  atoms  of  this  kind,  probably  just 
because  of  their  extreme  mobility,  passed  in  and  out  of  the 
body.  Hence  there  was  constant  communication  between 
a  particular  body  and  its  environment  by  the  coming  and 
going  of  these  atoms.  This  communication  was  effected  in 
two  ways,  according  as  the  atoms  passed  directly  through 
the  body  or  indirectly  through  special  organs. 

9.  The  most  general  function  of  soul  lay  in  maintaining 
vitality.  The  motion  of  the  soul  atoms  was  communicated 
to  the  other  atoms  of  the  body,  and  thus  produced  organic 
activity.  Life  remained  as  long  as  there  was  a  sufficient 

29  How  far  Democritus  went  with  the  idea  of  a  world  soul  cannot  be 
determined,  as  the  only  references  to  it  are  in  late  and  untrustworthy 
doxographers.  It  appears  that  he  did  speak  of  gods,  and  in  particular  of 
Zeus  as  the  "king  of  all"  (frag.  30,  DFV,  p.  397 ;  cf.  frag.  2)  ;  but  such 
figures  must  be  regarded  as  mere  personified  abstractions  for  the  purpose 
of  conveying  ethical  doctrines. 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

quantity  of  these  fiery  particles  in  the  body,  and  this  con- 
dition was  maintained  by  the  general  influx  of  soul  atoms 
through  every  part  of  the  body,  but  especially  by  the 
organs  of  respiration.  On  account  of  the  mobile  character 
of  these  atoms,  there  was  danger  that  they  might  be 
"squeezed  out"  of  the  body,  in  which  event  death  would 
of  course  ensue ;  and  it  was  the  special  function  of  respira- 
tion to  introduce  new,  fresh  psychic  atoms  from  the  air.30 

In  regard  to  sensation  or  perception,  the  same  principle 
holds.  A  presentation  is  formed  by  the  atoms  that  come 
from  the  object  to  all  parts  of  the  percipient  body;  but 
the  impression  will  not  be  felt  unless  there  is  a  sufficient 
number  of  permeating  atoms;  and  the  function  of  the 
special  organs  or  sense  (if  we  may  generalize  from  the 
description  of  sight  and  hearing,  as  given  by  Theophras- 
tus)  is  to  form  passages  for  the  transmission  of  these  atoms 
in  the  proper  quantity  to  the  soul.  Hence,  though  the 
sounding  atoms,  for  example,  penetrate  through  the  whole 
body,  we  hear  only  with  our  ears.  It  is  perhaps  worth 
while  to  point  out  also  that  this  theory  embraces  two 
notions  which  had  influenced  several  predecessors  of 
Democritus ;  namely,  that  all  sensation  depends  on  contact 
with  emanations  from  without  and  is  therefore  reducible 
to  a  general  tactile  sense,  and  that  the  organs  of  sense  must 
contain  atoms  similar  in  quality  to  those  that  cause  the 
sensation,  for  like  can  only  affect  like.31 

Democritus  was  very  emphatic  in  distinguishing 
thought  from  sensation,  and  in  asserting  that  only  the 
former  was  true ;  but  the  exact  physiological  and  psycho- 
logical basis  of  this  distinction  has  not  come  down  to 
us,  though  we  have  some  data  which  throw  light  on  the 

30  See  previous  references. 

31  Theo.,  De  Sensu,  49-58,  DFV,  pp.  373,  374 ;  Arist.,  De  Sensu,  4.  442  a  29, 
DFV,  p.  371. 

[216H 


THE  ATOMISTS 

subject.  In  the  first  place,  that  which  thinks  in  us  is  the 
same  as  that  which  perceives,  namely,  the  soul.32  If  then 
thought  and  sensation  are  activities  or  movements  of  the 
same  organ,  Democritus  must  differentiate  them  as  pro- 
cesses. Now  the  inferiority  of  the  senses  arises  from  the 
fact  that  the  images  which  are  given  off  by  all  objects  are 
distorted  by  the  air,  which  is  of  course  regarded  as  cor- 
poreal and  which  is  constantly  filled  with  emanations  from 
all  the  objects  in  the  environment.  This  explains  the 
blurred  vision  of  things  at  a  great  distance;  if  the  inter- 
vening space  was  void,  we  could  see  an  ant  crawling  on 
the  sky.33  Hence  we  have  no  true  perceptions  of  external 
objects,  because  we  do  not  perceive  them  directly,  but  only 
through  the  medium  of  a  series  of  confused  disturbances 
in  the  air.  Such  representations  by  the  five  senses  give  rise 
to  a  knowledge  which  is  only  opinion  (  So£i?)  ;  it  is  obscure, 
as  if  we  were  always  looking  at  things  in  the  dark  (  o-kotit}) 
and  could  see  only  their  vague  configurations.  When  this 
twilight  of  opinion  has  exhausted  its  possibilities  of  defini- 
tion, then  comes  true  knowledge  and  shows  us  that  the 
appearances  of  things  are  deceptive;  in  reality  things  are 
not  what  they  seem,  but  only  atoms  and  void.34  If  then  the 
special  organs  of  sense  by  their  indirect  processes  give  us 
false  representations,  and  if  the  true  knowledge  is  that 
in  reality  there  are  only  atoms  and  void,  then  it  seems 
probable  that  Democritus  meant  to  oppose  the  indirect 
process  of  sensation  to  the  direct  contact  of  soul  atoms 
with  extraneous  atoms.  We  have  seen  that  he  believed 
atoms  from  the  outside  were  constantly  permeating  all 
parts  of  the  body,  and  that  the  soul  atoms,  while  localized 

32  Arist.,  De  An.,  I.  2,  404  a  27,  405  a  5. 

33  Theo.,  loc.  cit.,  50;  Arist.,  De  An.,  I.  7,  419  a  15. 

34  frags.  6-11,  DFV,  pp.  388,  389. 

C  217  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

especially  in  the  brain,  heart,  and  liver,  were  not  confined 
to  these  organs  but  existed  everywhere  in  the  body.  It  was 
possible,  therefore,  for  atoms  of  the  soul  to  be  imme- 
diately affected  by  other  atoms  coming  from  outside.35  If 
this  interpretation  of  Democritus  is  correct,  it  means  that 
he  reduced  knowledge,  like  perception,  to  physical  con- 
tact— it  depends,  as  it  were,  on  the  soul's  sense  of  touch. 

But  here  a  new  and  at  first  rather  surprising  principle 
is  introduced.  Theophrastus  says  that,  according  to  De- 
mocritus, rational  thought  (to  <f>povelv)  occurs  when  the 
soul  is  symmetrically  constituted.36  The  text  is  uncertain, 
and  the  precise  meaning  of  the  passage  is  problematical ; 
but  that  Democritus  did  say  something  of  the  sort  seems  to 
be  confirmed  by  certain  references  in  Aristotle,  who  affirms 
that  he  explained  the  phenomena  of  madness  by  the  phys- 
ical condition  of  the  soul.37  If  the  soul  is  disturbed,  by  heat 
or  cold  for  instance,  its  movements  may  be  so  hampered 
that  it  does  not  judge  well;  and  if  it  is  harmed,  as  by  a 
blow  on  the  head,  it  may  think  wrongly,  so  that  the  person 
is  said  to  be  out  of  his  senses.  We  may  suppose  that  this 
doctrine  of  symmetrical  blending  (/cpao-is)  or  harmoniz- 
ing of  material  elements  was  an  effect  of  the  Pythagorean 
influence  on  Democritus,  which  is  attested  by  other 
authorities;38  but  its  significance  for  the  atomist  system  is 
best  explained  in  this  way.  Thought  is  a  movement  of  the 
soul;  a  movement  is  occasioned  by  contact  with  other 
moving  bodies,  but  the  result  of  such  contact  depends 
also  on  the  substance  or  internal  condition  of  the  body 

35  This  explanation  was  put  forward  by  Brandis  (Rhein  Mus.  Ill,  139), 
rejected  by  Zeller  (II,  p.  916,  n.  3),  and  has  been  recently  restated  by 
Burnet  (Gk.  Phil.,  p.  198). 

30  De  Sensu  58. 

37  Met.,  IV.  5,  1009  b  28;  De  An.,  I.  2,  404  a  27 ;  cf.  Iambi,  ap.  Stob.,  Eel. 
I,88o. 

38  cf.  above,  p.  198,  n.  7. 


THE  ATOMISTS 

affected.39  The  principle  is  thus  merely  a  general  law  of 
physics  specially  applied  to  the  atoms  of  the  soul,  and  our 
initial  surprise  is  changed  into  admiration  again  at  the 
consistency  of  the  system. 

It  will  be  seen  that  Democritus  was  enabled  to  separate 
knowledge  from  sensation  on  the  foregoing  physiological 
grounds,  and  to  make  a  valid  distinction  between  the 
accuracy  of  the  two  processes.  It  seems  likely  that  he  was 
led  to  this  distinction  by  attempting  to  combat  the  relativ- 
ism of  Protagoras,  his  fellow  townsman.  But  after  all, 
what  does  his  theory  of  knowledge  amount  to^  It  amounts 
to  the  assertion  that  the  soul  can  gain  a  true  and  definite 
knowledge  of  atoms  and  void  in  general,  because  our  soul 
can  apprehend  them  immediately  as  they  are ;  but  we  can- 
not know  any  thing  in  particular,  because  we  come  in 
contact  with  it  only  through  the  senses,  which  are  untrust- 
worthy. It  is  true  that  we  do  not  get  much  further  than  this 
with  objects  on  the  Kantian  epistemology;  but  Kant 
understood  the  use  of  the  understanding  to  build  up  a  body 
of  knowledge  in  conjunction  with  the  senses.  Democritus, 
without  any  such  logical  experience  and  strictly  limited 
by  his  materialistic  hypothesis  to  mechanical  processes  and 
physical  objects,  could  perhaps  do  something,  but  not 
much,  to  combat  the  contemporary  scepticism  by  showing 
the  possibility  of  knowing  atoms  and  void. 

10.  Nor  is  it  surprising  that,  when  he  turns  to  the  theory 
of  conduct,  he  should  not  define  the  highest  good  in  clear- 
cut  terms  of  knowledge,  but  should  rather  return  to  the 
material  of  the  soul  and  in  its  proper  constitution  find  the 
summum  bonum.  Yet  even  here  we  are  disappointed  to 
discover  no  definite  psychological  or  materialistic  basis 
for  his  ethical  doctrine.  He  appears  to  be  content  with 

39  cf .  frag.  9,  DFV,  p.  388,  ko.t£l  g&imtos  Siad^Kriv. 

L  219  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

the  assertion  that  happiness  or  unhappiness  rests  with  the 
soul,  and  is  not  a  matter  of  bodily  pleasure,40  but  he  prob- 
ably also  thought  of  it  as  that  condition  in  which  the 
movements  of  the  soul  are  not  violent  but  moderate  and 
harmonious.41  How  such  a  condition  is  to  be  differentiated 
from  that  symmetrical  state  of  the  soul  which  is  a  pre- 
requisite of  clear  knowledge,  or  whether  Democritus 
thought  of  them  as  the  same  thing,  we  can  only  guess  for 
ourselves. 

It  will  be  necessary  to  preface  a  further  consideration 
of  Democritus'  ethical  views  by  a  brief  account  of  the  gen- 
eral characteristics  of  his  method  and  his  writings.  In  the 
first  place,  a  great  many  works  on  all  sorts  of  topics  were 
attributed  to  him,  some  of  which  without  doubt  came  from 
different  members  of  his  School;  and  at  this  date  it  is 
impossible  to  determine  which  are  his  own.  There  does 
seem  to  be  some  reason  for  attributing  to  him,  in  the 
ethical  field,  the  treatise  entitled  irepl  evOvfxbqs,  On  Cheer- 
fulness; and  probably  also  he  brought  out  a  collection  of 
moral  maxims  or  aphorisms  (vTTOfxvrjfjidTojv  tjOikcov,  v7ro$rj- 
koll).42  That  means  that  certainly  some  of  the  fragments 
which  have  come  down  to  us  under  his  name  are,  as  they 
appear  to  be,  "isolated  observations  and  precepts,  which 
are  indeed  connected  by  the  same  moral  temper  and  mode 
of  thought,  but  not  by  definite  scientific  conceptions."43 
And  in  these  writings  the  ethical  thought  of  Democritus 

40  frags.  159,  171,  187,  DIV,  pp.  413,  416,  417. 

41  frag.  191,  DFV,  p.  420.  cf.  frag.  72,  where  immoderate  desires  are  said 
to  blind  the  soul ;  these  desires  must  be  interpreted  also  as  movements  of 
the  soul.  Also  frag.  33,  where  instruction  is  said  to  "change  the  rhythm"  of 
the  soul.  Stob.  II.  7,  3,  DFV,  p.  383,  says  that  Democritus  used  the  word 
drapa|£a. 

42  These  statements  are  made  on  grounds  of  probability  only.  Both  the 
works  mentioned  above  are  given  in  the  Tetralogies  of  Thrasyllus,  but 
that  is  no  guaranty.  They  were  accepted  by  Lortzing  (Ueb.  d.  Eth.  Frag. 
Demokrits),  and  Burnet  (Gk.  Phil.  I,  p.  199)  accepts  the  former. 

43  Zeller,  II,  p.  935. 

C   220   ] 


THE  ATOMISTS 

is  on  a  level  with  that  of  Heraclitus — reflective  but  un- 
systematic. But  on  the  other  hand,  if  we  accept  the  dis- 
course On  Cheerfulness,  it  is  natural  to  suppose  that  it 
was  a  connected  treatise  with  some  logical  development, 
in  contrast  to  the  book  of  unconnected  maxims ;  and  when 
we  turn  to  the  extant  fragments,  there  are  a  few  which 
seem  to  have  formed  part  of  a  larger  connected  work,  and 
at  least  one  (191  DFV)  is  long  enough  to  contain  a  log- 
ical sequence.  These  indications,  therefore,  point  to  a 
stage  of  ethical  thought  somewhat  more  advanced  than 
that  of  Heraclitus  and  evincing  the  rudiments  of  compre- 
hensive treatment.  Hence  we  must  suppose  that  the  ethical 
views  of  Democritus  were  developed  with  a  certain  logical 
consistency,  though  probably  not  to  the  same  high  degree 
as  is  manifested  in  his  cosmological  works,  which  had  the 
benefit  of  a  longer  tradition  behind  them.  But  if  there  was 
any  such  consistency,  then  we  may  legitimately  try  to 
recreate  it  from  the  extant  fragments  for  purposes  of 
interpretation,  either  because  these  fragments  are  really 
broken  pieces  of  an  originally  comprehensive  expression, 
or  because  they  are  maxims  isolated  merely  in  expression 
but  promulgated  from  the  same  consistent  system  of 
thought.  We  shall  accordingly  proceed  to  do  this,  without 
implying  either  that  the  present  condition  of  the  remains 
will  enable  us  to  reproduce  the  original  completely  or  that 
the  original  itself  was  perfectly  systematized. 

We  have  already  noticed  that  Democritus  made  happi- 
ness a  quality  of  the  soul  and  not  of  the  body.  In  words 
that  have  a  Socratic  reminiscence,  he  says :  "It  is  meet  for 
men  to  take  account  of  soul  rather  than  of  body ;  for  per- 
fection of  soul  corrects  wretchedness  of  the  bodily  taber- 
nacle, but  bodily  strength  without  reasoning  makes  the 

C   221    3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

soul  not  a  whit  better."4*  And  there  are  many  other  pas- 
sages in  which  the  weaknesses  of  the  flesh  are  thrown  into 
unfavorable  contrast  with  the  powers  and  excellence  of 
the  soul.45  Indeed,  the  opposition  between  the  two  is  occa- 
sionally developed  almost  to  a  dichotomy  which  in  lan- 
guage resembles  Pythagorean  mysticism  and  which  in  fact 
ill  consists  with  the  physical  and  physiological  doctrines 
of  Atomism.  Yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  about  the  general 
proposition  that  Democritus  thought  of  human  well-being 
as  dependent  upon  the  soul. 

Furthermore  he  is  equally  emphatic  that  this  well-being 
rests  entirely  with  the  individual.  "The  gods  of  old  gave 
and  still  give  to  men  all  good  things ;  but  whatever  is  evil 
and  harmful  and  useless,  these  things  they  neither  gave 
nor  give,  but  men  themselves  walk  into  such  through  the 
blindness  and  foolishness  of  their  mind."46  External  ob- 
jects bring  us  evil  or  good  according  to  our  use  of  them.47 
Happiness  or  nnhappiness  is  thus  the  resulj^of  our  own 
free  choice.48  "Men  have  fashioned  an  image  of  Luck  to 
excuse  their  own  thoughtlessness ;  for  Luck  rarely  opposes 
wisdom,  and  keen-sighted  intelligence  sets  most  things 
straight  in  life."49  Hence  in  this  aspect,  goodness  is  prac- 
tically equivalent  to  intelligence,  as  the  faculty  of  dis- 
cernment; and  there  are  many  fragments  in  which  the 
special  qualities  of  intelligence,  such  as  wisdom,  clever- 
ness, understanding,  reason,  are  virtually  synonymous 
with  excellence  of  soul.50  We  can  therefore  understand 

44  frag.  187,  DFV,  p.  419. 

45  frags.  37,  40,  57,  105,  159,  189. 

46  frag.  175;  cf.,  however,  frag.  269. 

47  frags.  172,  173. 

48  alpe6fj.evos,  frag.  37;  £0£\eiv,  frag.  62;  f$ov\ofi4v(p}    frag.  173. 

49  frag.  119. 

50  frags.  31,  77,  105,  181,  197,  200,  247. 

C   222    ] 


THE  ATOMISTS 

the  very  misleading  interpretation  of  Aristotle  that  for 
Democritus  soul  and  mind  were  the  same  thing.51 

That  such  is  not  the  case  becomes  abundantly  apparent 
when  we  inquire  more  closely  what  Democritus  meant  by 
happiness,  for  we  are  left  in  no  uncertainty  that  he  identi- 
fied it  with  pleasure.52  It  was  of  course  not  bodily  pleasure 
but  a  kind  of  unruffled  cheerfulness  of  spirit ;  and  the  real 
function  of  the  intelligence  was  apparently  to  determine 
ways  of  producing  this  condition.  "Fools  live  without  en- 
joyment of  life,"  for  "wisdom  frees  the  soul  of  its  ills."53 
It  looks  as  if  Democritus  had  no  appreciation  of  wisdom 
on  ethical  grounds — no  vision  of  a  philosophical  pursuit 
of  knowledge — for  all  his  protestations  against  bastard 
wisdom;  certainly  there  is  no  clear  enunciation  of  such  a 
principle,  while  there  are  many  phrases  which  suggest  that 
the  mind,  as  the  organ  of  knowledge,  was  useful  insofar 
as  it  subserved  the  general  end  of  pleasure.  Intelligence 
and  discernment  enable  one  to  choose  the  good  instead  of 
the  evil  beforehand,  and  to  turn  evil  into  good  after- 
wards.54 But  even  so,  we  must  acknowledge  that  Democri- 
tus, by  putting  happiness  in  the  soul  and  by  mixing  with 
it  such  a  large  element  of  wisdom,  has  certainly  and  suc- 
cessfully avoided  what  Professor  Burnet  dubs  a  "vulgar 
Hedonism." 

This  is  made  even  more  evident  by  the  principle  of 
moderation  which  Democritus  introduced  into  his  doc- 

51  De  An.,  I.  2,404  a  27. 

52  repair}  and  eiOvfitTj  are  the  most  usual  words ;  Stob.  II.  7,  3,  DFV,  p.  383, 
says  that  Democritus  also  used  eveo-rci,  apuovla,  cvp-p-erpla,  drapa^ia,  some  of 
which  occur  in  the  fragments. 

53  frags.  200,  31.  The  full  form  of  the  latter  is:  "Medicine  heals  diseases 
of  the  body,  but  wisdom  frees  the  soul  of  its  ills."  This  may  be  a  prosaic 
adaptation  of  the  Pythagorean  doctrine :  medicine  to  purge  the  body  and 
music  to  purge  the  soul. 

84  frags.  58,  66,  76,  173. 

C  223  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

trine  of  happiness.  "Cheerfulness  (happiness)  comes  to 
men  through  moderation  in  pleasure  and  harmony  of 
life";  both  excess  and  deficiency  are  bad.55  This  seems 
to  be  a  general  law,  governing  not  only  pleasure  but  also 
desires  and  indeed  the  whole  conduct  of  life;  it  proceeded 
therefore  from  an  attitude  of  mind  or  an  ethical  quality 
of  the  intelligence.  It  was  the  idea  of  many  elements  har- 
monized into  a  consistent  whole  by  compromise  between 
extremes,  applied  first  to  the  concept  of  human  existence, 
and  then  more  specifically  to  that  of  pleasure ;  and  as  such, 
it  represented  the  best  traditions  of  Greek  life  and 
thought,  that  were  taken  up  into  all  the  noblest  of  their 
philosophies.  In  Democritus,  as  in  the  great  Athenian 
thinkers,  it  gave  rise  to  the  virtue  of  crco^poavvrj,^  a.  com- 
plex quality  characteristic  of  a  sound  or  normal  mind 
in  the  enjoyment  of  every  object  only  so  far  as  is  con- 
sistent with  its  own  total  activity.  But  in  the  Atomist 
system,  this  moderation  in  conduct  is  quite  certainly  based 
on  the  psychological  doctrine  that  every  act  of  conscious- 
ness (this  seems  the  only  way  to  put  it)  is  a  movement 
of  the  soul;  hence  the  greater  these  movements  are,  the 
less  does  the  soul  enjoy  that  state  of  equipoised  stability 
in  its  motion,  which  was  the  physical  condition  of 
happiness. 

Perhaps  a  translation  of  the  longest  extant  fragment 
(191),  which  probably  comes  from  the  book  On  Cheer- 
fulness, will  now  prove  helpful  in  understanding  the 
ethical  position  of  Democritus.  It  is  as  follows:  "For 
cheerfulness  comes  to  men  by  moderation  in  pleasure  and 
symmetry  of  life.  But  what  falls  short  or  is  excessive  is 
likely  to  change  suddenly  and  to  cause  great  movements 

55  frags.  70,  72,  102,  191,  233-5,  286. 

56  frags.  208,  210,  211,  291,  294. 

C  224  1 


THE  ATOMISTS 

in  the  soul ;  and  souls  that  are  moved  through  great  inter- 
vals (i.e.  from  one  extreme  to  the  other,  violently)  are 
neither  stable  nor  cheerful.  So  then  men  ought  to  keep 
their  thoughts  on  what  is  possible  and  to  satisfy  them- 
selves with  what  they  have,  taking  small  notice  of  envied 
and  admired  things  and  not  attending  to  these  in  their 
thoughts.  You  should  rather  observe  the  lives  of  the 
afflicted  and  consider  earnestly  their  sufferings,  in  order 
that  your  present  circumstances  may  appear  great  and 
commendable  in  your  eyes,  and  that  your  soul  may  no 
longer  be  distressed  by  desire  for  more.  For  if  a  person 
admires  and  keeps  his  thoughts  all  the  day  on  those  who 
have  possessions  and  who  are  esteemed  fortunate  by  their 
fellows,  he  is  compelled  ever  to  strive  after  something  new 
and  to  turn  his  desires  toward  doing  one  of  those  irrepar- 
able deeds  which  the  laws  forbid.  Therefore  it  is  necessary 
not  to  seek  after  some  things  but  to  be  cheerful  with  other 
things,  and,  comparing  your  life  with  those  who  are  worse 
off,  to  count  yourself  happy,  seeing  what  they  suffer  and 
how  much  better  you  live  than  they.  By  holding  fast  to 
this  idea,  you  will  live  more  cheerfully,  and  in  your  life 
you  will  repel  not  a  few  evil  spirits — envy,  and  jealousy, 
and  ill-will." 

1 1 .  Let  us  now  attempt  to  examine  these  ethical  views 
more  critically.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  undoubtedly  a 
putative  connection  between  them  and  the  physical  doc- 
trines, which  might  be  represented  in  its  simplest  form 
thus  :  cheerfulness  =  stable.,  harmoniojjis^^ 
=_sjlabk^an^  It  is  of 

course  idle  to  speculate  whether  Democritus  or  Epicurus 
or  some  one  else  could  not  have  reached  the  conception  of 
spiritual  calm  and  stability  without  the  Atomist  physics; 
on  the  evidence  at  hand,  there  seems  small  reason  to  doubt 

C  225  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

that  this  ideal,  which  was  to  wield  so  large  an  influence  in 
the  history  of  ethics,  was  actually  due  in  the  first  instance 
to  Democritus'  conception  of  the  natural  state  of  a  com- 
posite body  whose  parts  are  mechanically  related,  and  to 
his  materialistic  notion  of  soul.  Again,  his  doctrine  of 
pleasure  was  probably  influenced  by  his  physical  point  of 
view.  There  is  a  very  significant  fragment  in  which  he 
says  that  "the  boundary  between  the  useful  and  the  injur- 
ious is  pleasure  and  pain,"  and  we  are  told  that  he  said 
this  often.57  Hence  pleasure  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  feeling 
which  characterizes  the  natural  state  of  sentient  body; 
and  it  was  mechanically  conditioned,  as  shown  by  the  doc- 
trine of  moderation  or  harmonious  movement.  It  is  there- 
fore probably  true  that  most  of  the  fundamental  features 
of  Atomist  ethics  were  logically  and  consistently  con- 
nected with  the  physical  theories  of  the  same  system. 

There  are,  however,  many  ideas  among  these  ethical 
doctrines  which  cannot  have  had  any  such  connection.  It 
is  hard  to  see,  for  example,  how  the  superiority  of  the  soul 
over  the  body  could  be  deduced  from  the  principles  of 
Atomist  physics,  or  even  be  justified  on  these  principles; 
surely  the  mobility  of  certain  atoms  is  no  more  useful  to 
them  or  the  world  at  large  than  the  stability  of  other 
atoms,  and  least  of  all  in  a  field  where  stability  is  a  desid- 
eratum, as  it  is  in  the  soul.  The  physical  properties  of  soul 
atoms  do  indeed  enable  them  to  penetrate  everywhere  and 
so  make  intelligence  possible;  but  their  mobility  was  a 
consequence  of  these  physical  properties  and  was  therefore 
their  natural  condition,  so  that  stability  would  be  an 
unnatural  ideal  forced  upon  them.  And  again,  even  if  this 
mobility  produces  intelligence,  how  can  intelligence  be 
considered  a  superior  thing  on  the  principles  of  Atomism4? 

67  frag.  188;  cf.  frag.  4. 

£226:1 


THE  ATOMISTS 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Pythagorean  terms  in  which  this 
whole  doctrine  is  frequently  couched  make  it  extremely 
likely  that  it  was  a  borrowed  idea  which  Democritus  in- 
corporated among  his  ethical  views.  Furthermore  such 
notions  as  the  value  of  justice,  friendship,  cooperation, 
etc.,  must  have  come  from  a  consideration  of  social  life 
and  human  conduct  in  and  by  itself  without  regard  to  the 
laws  of  physics.  They  are  similar  to  ideas  which  were  rife 
in  intellectual  circles  at  the  time,  and  they  were  of  such 
a  general  application  that  they  could  easily  be  adapted  to 
fit  any  philosophical  system.  We  must  therefore  conclude 
that  there  were  two  sources  for  the  ethics  of  Democritus 
— his  own  materialistic  cosmology  and  the  general  cur- 
rent of  reflective  morality — and  that  sometimes  the  author 
took  an  idea  from  the  latter  which  did  not  fit  the  former. 
It  remains  for  us  to  examine  Democritus'  ability  to 
make  distinctions  and  to  work  with  abstract  conceptions. 
And  here  we  must  first  notice  Aristotle's  judgment  that 
Democritus  was  one  of  the  pioneers  in  the  employment  of 
definitions  and  the  conception  of  essential  natures.58  But 
the  only  express  premise  given  for  this  conclusion  is  "a 
sort  of  definition  of  the  hot  and  the  cold,"  and  it  is  im- 
possible to  discover  among  the  extant  fragments  of  De- 
mocritus any  such  definition.  Now  if  we  compare  these 
fragments  with  those  of  Parmenides,  we  find  that  the 
latter  go  far  ahead  of  the  former  in  the  abstraction  of 
qualities  from  sensible  phenomena.  We  have  already 
noted  the  admirable  consistency  of  the  Atomist  system  of 
causation,  but  there  is  not  the  slightest  evidence  that  this 
resulted  from  any  superior  notion  of  the  formal  cause 

58  Aristotle  uses  these  phrases  in  connection  with  this  ability  of  Democri- 
tus: rb  tI  7jv  elvai,  eldos,  oplfrardai,  De  Part.  An.,  I.  1,  642  a  24;  Met.,  XIII.  4, 
1078  b  20;  Phys.,  II.  2.  194  a  81.  And  in  some  of  these  passages  Democritus 
isassociated  with  the  Pythagoreans  or  Empedocles,  but  not  with  Parmenides. 

C  227  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

— indeed,  how  could  there  be  any  formal  cause  in  the  phi- 
losophy of  Democritus,  except  Necessity*?  And  this  figure 
of  Necessity  is  not  a  formula;  it  might  be  classed  as  a  form 
or  law  expressive  of  the  essential  nature  of  the  world,  but 
only  in  the  vaguest  sense  and  without  any  attempt  at 
definition.  The  uniformity  of  the  Atomist  system  is  best 
explained  negatively,  that  is,  as  the  refusal  to  interpolate 
among  concrete  phenomena  others  of  a  different  kind ;  but 
that  seems  to  be  due  to  a  firm  disbelief  in  any  other  kind 
of  things,  rather  than  to  a  conception  of  the  form  or  idea 
of  Necessity.  Furthermore,  in  the  ethical  field,  Democritus 
evinces  no  high  degree  of  intellectual  capacity  in  pene- 
trating to  the  essential  nature  of  moral  and  mental  activi- 
ties. Most  of  his  statements  describe  an  action  but  do  not 
distinguish  an  essential  quality.  For  example,  "justice  is 
to  do  what  is  right;  injustice  is  not  to  do  what  is  right,  but 
to  turn  aside  from  it"  (frag.  256) — a  form  of  expression 
that  reminds  us  of  Polemarchus  and  his  level  of  ethical 
intelligence.  You  cannot  define  justice  by  infinitives.  No 
attempt  is  made  to  define  mind,  wisdom,  happiness,  cheer- 
fulness, pleasure,  or  to  distinguish  a  bodily  organ,  an  activ- 
ity, a  quality,  and  a  condition.  Hence  we  simply  cannot 
tell  how  far  through  his  ethical  doctrine  there  was  a  con- 
sistent relation  with  his  materialistic  principles.  We  can 
agree  with  Zeller59  that  Democritus  "did  not  inquire  into 
the  nature  of  moral  activity  generally,"  if  we  understand 
"the  nature  of  moral  activity"  to  mean  its  essential  nature 
as  determined  by  definitions.  But  on  the  other  hand,  we 
must  in  justice  admit  that  Democritus  did  inquire  into 
moral  activity  generally,  and  that  he  was  the  first  cos- 
mologist  to  do  so.  He,  no  less  than  Socrates,  recognized 
that  the  mental  and  moral  nature  of  man  furnished  a  prob- 
59  u?  p.  935- 

r.  2283 


THE  ATOMISTS 

lem  which  philosophy  could  not  ignore;  and  perhaps  he 
understood  the  relation  such  an  inquiry  must  bear  to  the 
whole  of  philosophy  even  better  than  his  great  Athenian 
contemporary.  His  great  inferiority  to  the  latter  lies  in  the 
comparative  weakness  of  his  logical  equipment,  in  expla- 
nation of  which  we  may  hazard  the  guess  that,  in  attempt- 
ing to  refute  the  Eleatics,  he  did  not  appreciate  his  debt 
to  them. 


PART    TWO 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 
TO  THE  TIME  OF  PLATO 


CHAPTER    I 

THE  FIRST  AND  SECOND  PERIODS 
OF  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

A  retrospect  over  the  general  course  of  Greek  philoso- 
phy is  perhaps  as  instructive  and  necessary  as  an  examina- 
tion of  the  individual  systems  of  thought,  for  in  this  way 
we  can  best  gain  a  critical  understanding  of  its  historical 
development  and  cultural  significance.  To  this  end  we 
may  mark  the  gradual  acquisition  of  data,  discern  the 
progress  in  methods,  compare  the  main  tendencies  of 
the  several  periods,  and  endeavor  to  assess  the  meaning 
of  the  whole. 

We  are  met  at  the  outset  with  the  problem  of  differen- 
tiating what  is  traditionally  known  as  cosmology  from 
the  thought  that  preceded  and  followed  it.  This  is  merely 
a  particular  instance  of  the  general  problem  of  historical 
periods,  for  the  rise  of  cosmology  is  commonly  considered 
to  inaugurate  a  new  period,  which  in  turn  was  brought  to 
a  close  by  the  humanistic  emphasis  of  the  Socratic  Age. 
We  thus  group  together  certain  contiguous  events  into  a 
period,  and  distinguish  them  as  a  whole  from  an  earlier 
and  a  later  group.  The  distinguishing  feature  is  usually 
a  tendency,  and  a  period  of  history  is  therefore  ordinarily 
conceived  as  a  portion  of  past  time  within  which  a  par- 
ticular tendency  was  predominant.  The  very  study  of 
history,  when  properly  understood,  is  based  on  the  sup- 
position that  tendencies  of  the  past  may  be  disentangled 

C  233  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

from  the  web  and  woof  of  events  through  which  they 
worked,  and  isolated  for  comparison  and  present  appre- 
ciation. But  a  natural  and  almost  inevitable  result  of  this 
procedure  is  that  it  often  becomes  more  engrossed  in  sep- 
arating a  period  from  its  antecedent  than  in  understand- 
ing the  connection  between  the  two;  for  the  human  mind 
is  so  constituted  that  it  delights  in  clear-cut  definitions. 
Yet  it  should  not  be  necessary  to  remind  an  age  so  thor- 
oughly imbued  with  evolutionary  doctrine  as  our  own  that 
any  period  must  to  a  large  extent  be  conditioned  by  its 
precursor,  that  what  is  new  in  it  must  be  extremely  small 
as  compared  to  what  is  old,  and  that  it  cannot  be  ade- 
quately represented  by  stressing  its  peculiarities  to  the 
exclusion  of  those  features  which  have  been  handed  on  to 
it.  A  truer  method  of  approach  is  gained  by  recalling  that 
a  period  is  in  reality  an  abstraction  of  the  historian  for 
purposes  of  his  own.  The  same  extent  of  time  may  be 
differently  divided  by  different  historians,  especially  if 
they  are  interested  in  different  aspects  of  existence;  for 
a  span  of  years  distinguished  by  some  new  political  ten- 
dency, like  the  impulse  to  colonize  or  to  federate,  may  not 
be  marked  by  any  particular  ethical  or  scientific  traits,  for 
example.  Historical  analysis  is  and  must  be  to  a  certain 
extent  subjective. 

For  the  historian  of  philosophy,  the  actual  data  are  the 
thoughts  of  individual  human  beings.  These  individuals 
received  from  others  who  were  before  them  certain  ideas, 
points  of  view,  background  and  physical  environment,  all 
of  which  were  bound  to  be  factors  in  any  new  intellectual 
activity.  Now  an  historical  tendency  is  simply  a  conscious 
agreement  among  contemporaneous  individuals  to  regard 
a  particular  set  of  facts  in  a  particular  way.  But  no  indi- 
vidual and  no  group  of  individuals  can  ever  change  the 

C  234  ] 


FIRST  AND  SECOND  PERIODS 

whole  of  life — there  seems  to  be  in  intellectual  activity 
a  law  of  limited  expansion,  so  that  at  any  one  time  we  can 
go  so  far  and  no  further.  The  progress  of  today  is  finally 
stopped  by  hindrances  that  will  have  disappeared  or  be 
easily  overcome  tomorrow.  Hence,  in  our  mental  exist- 
ence, we  live  mostly  on  the  past,  and  a  new  tendency 
means  no  more  than  an  advance  along  one  of  many  con- 
tinuous lines.  Such  advances  are  constantly  being  made, 
but  the  historian  selects  that  one  which  he  believes  most 
important,  and  regards  the  duration  of  its  ascendency  as 
a  period.  Yet  it  is  obvious  that  a  period,  which  by  one  new 
tendency  is  distinguished  from  its  predecessor,  is  indis- 
tinguishable from  it  in  a  thousand  other  ways. 

It  is  the  received  opinion  that  philosophy  began  with 
Thales,  and  that  is  a  convenient  and  sufficient  summary 
for  minds  that  take  satisfaction  in  such  summaries.  But  it 
should  not  suggest  that  previous  to  Thales  no  one  had 
wondered  about  the  operation  of  the  world  and  the  mean- 
ing of  human  life  or  had  ventured  to  explain  these  prob- 
lems. Nor  should  it  be  taken  to  signify  the  discovery  or 
invention  of  a  wholly  new  system  of  thought,  that  com- 
pletely filled  the  minds  of  its  adherents  so  that  nothing 
of  the  traditional  point  of  view  remained.  The  presocratic 
period  did  contain  a  new  tendency  which  distinguished  it 
from  all  that  had  gone  before ;  but  that  tendency  again  was 
simply  a  new  idea  which  was  accepted  by  certain  individ- 
uals, which  existed  in  their  minds  by  the  side  of  countless 
old  notions,  and  which  was  itself  moulded  by  all  this 
mental  equipment  in  the  midst  of  which  it  originated. 
There  is  no  sense  in  cutting  off  Cosmology  from  the  pre- 
vious Mythology  and  Cosmogony  with  any  legislative 
finality.  The  Greeks  had  long  been  curious ;  they  had  of  old 
tried  to  explain  nature  to  themselves;  and  the  Milesians 

t  235  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

were  only  continuing  and  developing  an  ancient  practice. 

How  the  old  point  of  view  and  the  old  expressions 
worked  to  qualify  the  new  idea,  I  have  attempted  to  ex- 
plain in  the  first  sections  of  Part  I.  We  are  now  con- 
cerned in  the  attempt  to  discover  and  define  the  new 
tendency,  which  makes  us  group  together  the  thinkers  from 
Thales  to  Leucippus  into  a  period.  What  was  it  that  dis- 
tinguished this  period  from  the  earlier  ages'?  It  was  not 
that  men  ceased  "telling  tales,"  for  in  a  sense  they  did 
not  cease ;  the  Milesians  exercised  their  ever-lively  imagi- 
nation on  rain  and  wind,  as  their  ancestors  had  done.  It 
was  not  that  they  stopped  inventing  myths  about  the 
origin  of  things  and  tried  to  explain  what  things  are  now; 
the  mythologers  had  explained  what  things  are  and  the 
Milesians  attempted  to  describe  the  origin  of  things.  It 
was  not  that  they  gave  up  gods  as  causes,  for  they  still 
had  gods  and  their  gods  were  the  only  causes  of  movement 
which  they  knew.  It  is  true  that  these  philosophic  gods 
were  conceived  quite  differently  from  the  mythological 
gods;  the  fanciful  and  whimsical  deities  of  poetry  were 
discarded,  and  the  personal  characteristics  of  the  popular 
gods\of#  nature  became  submerged  in  the  natural  ele- 
ments/instead of  a  god  in  some  indefinable  way  transcend- 
ing his  element,  the  element  now  was  god.  But  on  the  other 
hand,  the  element  gained  certain  characteristics  which  had 
before  been  attributes  of  the  god,  such  as  life,  ability  to 
beget  offspring,  and  in  some  cases  knowledge.  Now  such 
a  notion  could  hardly  have  been  arrived  at  without  some 
antecedent  disturbance  of  traditional  ideas — it  must  have 
been  an  effect,  not  the  cause,  of  a  change. 

What  was  really  new  seems  to  have  been  the  develop- 
ment and  combination  of  several  old  tendencies.  In  the 
first  place,  the  earliest  philosophers  became  interested  in 

C2363 


FIRST  AND  SECOND  PERIODS 

nature  for  its  own  sake.  Of  course,  people  had  been  inter- 
ested in  nature  before  this;  the  poets,  especially  Hesiod, 
had  manifested  more  or  less  curiosity  about  natural  pro- 
cesses, and  others,  such  as  sailors  and  magi,  doubtless 
concerned  themselves  to  some  degree  with  physical  phe- 
nomena. But  in  all  such  cases  interest  in  nature  was  sec- 
ondary and  subservient  to  another  main  purpose,  while 
in  the  philosophers  it  was  itself  the  main  motive.  Theirs 
was  the  sustained  curiosity  from  which  science  springs. 

In  the  second  place,  they  investigated  nature.  Investi- 
gation is  a  general  term  whose  meaning  depends  upon  its 
application;  but  it  is  the  right  word  to  describe  the  work 
of  the  first  philosophers.  Their  methods,  as  one  would 
expect,  appear  to  have  been  mainly  those  of  direct  observa- 
tion, but  the  keenness  of  their  curiosity  very  soon  led  them 
also  to  make  experiments.  Their  inquiry  was  not  limited 
by  the  hypothetical  boundaries  of  particular  sciences  and 
disciplines,  for  these  did  not  then  exist ;  and  though  it  seems 
likely  that  their  attention  was  turned  chiefly  to  celestial 
phenomena  and  the  great  natural  elements,  yet  it  was  cer- 
tainly not  confined  to  this  field,  but  was  attracted  to  many 
objects  and  processes  throughout  the  whole  realm  of  na- 
ture. Now  it  would  certainly  be  impossible  to  prove,  and 
it  is  most  unlikely,  that  no  one  had  investigated  nature 
before  this,  especially  if  we  use  investigation  in  the  broad 
sense  that  has  been  specified.  It  would  be  perfectly  pos- 
sible, for  instance,  to  maintain  that  Hesiod  had  done  this. 
But  the  investigation  of  the  earliest  philosophers  seems 
to  imply  a  consistent  distinction  of  the  sensible  materials 
of  nature  from  all  separate  invisible  and  mythological 
forces  frequently  imagined  to  be  behind  it.  These  men 
were  content  to  work  with  what  they  could  see  or  thought 

C  237  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

they  could  see,  and  that  is  the  first  requisite  of  scientific 
method. 

In  the  third  place,  they  tried  to  explain  nature.  Here 
again  they  were  obviously  not  the  first,  but  their  explana- 
tions differed  from  the  previous  ones  in  stopping  with  the 
connection  between  observed  phenomena.  Before  this,  an 
explanation  seems  to  have  explained  only  by  referring 
a  visible  object  to  an  invisible  agent;  but  it  now  became 
mainly  a  matter  of  regular  relationship  between  two 
equally  visible  phenomena.  In  other  words,  the  explana- 
tions of  the  first  philosophers  were  made  in  terms  of  regu- 
lar natural  sequences,  which  form  the  paramount  subject- 
matter  of  science. 

The  conjunction  of  these  three  tendencies,  namely,  sus- 
tained curiosity  or  desire  for  knowledge,  investigation  of 
material  objects  by  observation,  and  explanation  by  means 
of  regular  connections  between  phenomena,  produces  the 
essence  of  what  we  know  as  natural  science.  They  are,  as 
it  were,  the  beginning,  middle,  and  end,  or  the  motive, 
method  and  product  of  natural  science.  Hence  what  was 
really  new  and  what  distinguishes  the  work  of  Thales  and 
his  successors  from  all  that  had  gone  before  was  the  pres- 
ence of  a  scientific  point  of  view,  the  essence  of  which  was 
an  appreciation  of  regularity  in  the  working  of  the  ma- 
terial world. 

If  exception  be  taken  to  such  a  statement  on  the  ground 
that  we  are  discussing  philosophy  rather  than  science, 
I  must  reply  that  this  objection  implies  a  separation  be- 
tween the  two  which  is  belied  by  the  very  history  of  them, 
which  we  have  just  considered.  The  province  of  philosophy 
is  fortunately  not  confined  within  narrow  bounds,  but 
includes  any  inquiry  into  the  real  or  ultimate  nature  of 
the  world;  and  the  investigation  of  the  earliest  Greek 


FIRST  AND  SECOND  PERIODS 

thinkers  certainly  was  such  an  inquiry.  More  precisely, 
their  doctrines  may  be  analyzed  into  a  structure  of  theory 
and  generalization  built  upon  a  foundation  of  sensuous 
observation.  Whether  this  should  be  called  philosophy  or 
science  or  should  be  divided  between  them  is  a  matter  of 
small  moment;  it  is  commonly  classed  under  philosophy 
and  I  see  no  valid  reason  to  modify  the  arrangement. 

The  really  important  point  which  is  brought  out  by 
the  objection  we  are  debating  is  that  what  we  call  phi- 
losophy originated  in  scientific  investigation.  The  same 
impulse  that  drove  Thales  and  his  successors  to  observe 
the  processes  of  their  material  environment  drove  them 
also  to  explanations  of  these  processes;  and  earlyJjEreek 
philosophy  as  a  whole  was  marked  by  this  close  connec- 
tion between  what  we  term  natural  science,  and  what  we 
term  philosophy,  the  characteristic  product  of  which  is 
known  as  Cosmology.  The  point,  however,  is  a  purely  his- 
torical one,  and  should  not  by  itself  lead  to  the  assump- 
tion that  philosophy  cannot  exist  except  upon  the  solid 
foundations  of  natural  science;  that  would  be  to  overlook 
another  historical  point,  and  an  equally  important  one, 
namely,  that  this  same  early  Greek  philosophy  included 
the  doctrines  of  the  Eleatic  School,  some  of  which  were 
not  based  on  natural  science  but  rather  denied  its  possi- 
bility. This  fact  would  appear  to  constitute  an  exception 
to  the  statement  that  the  tendency  which  distinguishes 
the  presocratic  period  is  essentially  the  scientific  impulse ; 
and  in  a  sense  that  is  true.  The  purely  metaphysical  doc- 
trines of  the  Eleatics  do  stand  aside  from  the  main  current 
of  the  period,  and  may  be  thought  of  as  the  first  germ  of 
the  logical  investigations  of  the  next.  Yet  even  here  we 
can  see  that  our  principal  statement  is  correct,  for  Par- 
menides,  the  founder  of  the  Eleatic  School,  after  f ashion- 

C  239  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

ing  his  metaphysical  system,  recognized  the  predominant 
philosophical  tendency  of  his  age  by  developing  another 
system  based  on  natural  science.  Hence  we  may  rest  satis- 
fied with  the  generalization  that  the  tendency  which  dis- 
tinguishes the  presocratic  period  of  Greek  philosophy  was 
the  scientific  inquiry  into  the  natural  world. 

It  is  usually  agreed  that  this  first  period  came  to  its 
close  with  the  advent  of  the  Sophists  and  Socrates ;  and  a 
new  period,  called  the  Socratic,  was  thereby  inaugurated  in 
the  course  of  Greek  philosophy.  This  will  mean  that  the 
natural  scientific  tendency,  which  had  been  predominant, 
lost  some  of  its  force  so  that  it  no  longer  impressed  philo- 
sophic inquiry  strongly,  and  a  new  tendency  arose  which 
so  modified  the  thought  of  subsequent  investigators  that 
their  doctrines  may  be  classed  together  and  distinguished 
as  a  whole  from  the  preceding  group.  It  is  well  to  remem- 
ber, however,  that  the  old  tendency  did  not  die,  for  even 
after  Socrates  had  turned  philosophy  into  new  channels, 
there  were  thinkers,  like  Diogenes  of  Apollonia,  who  still 
followed  the  old  quest ;  and  after  the  first  rush  of  enthus- 
iasm with  the  fresh  problems  wore  off,  the  master-figures 
of  the  period,  Plato,  Democritus,  and  Aristotle,  took  up 
again  the  old  question  of  the  material  constitution  of  the 
world.  It  is  well  to  remember  also  that  the  new  tendency 
came  into  being  while  the  old  interest  in  nature  was  still 
predominant;  for  we  have  seen  that  Empedocles,  Anaxa- 
goras,  Philolaus  and  Leucippus,  to  say  nothing  of  many 
minor  characters,  were  the  philosophic  thinkers  of  the 
time  when  the  earliest  Sophists  and  Socrates  began  their 
work.  The  new,  therefore,  existed  side  by  side  with  the 
old,  the  one  gaining,  the  other  losing,  ascendency;  and  it 
is  impossible  to  fix  a  year  for  the  boundary  between  them, 
for  temporally  they  overlap.  Perhaps  we  might  go  so  far 

C  240  ] 


FIRST  AND  SECOND  PERIODS 

as  to  say  that  the  new  tendency  had  already  become  pre- 
dominant by  the  opening  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  fifth 
century  b.c. 

Let  us  now  ask  exactly  what  this  new  tendency  was. 
That  it  had  to  do  with  mankind,  as  contrasted  with  the 
physical  world  in  which  the  main  interest  of  the  previous 
inquiry  had  lain,  we  have  already  noticed,  and  this  much 
seems  to  be  admitted  by  all  historians.  But  we  want  to 
isolate  it,  so  to  speak,  and  define  its  essential  character. 
We  shall  find  that  this  tendency,  like  that  which  ushered 
in  the  previous  period,  was  a  development  and  a  combina- 
tion of  several  old  ones.  In  the  first  place,  the  apostles  of 
the  new  order  raised  the  problem  of  knowledge.  This  was 
a  subject  which  in  one  form  or  another  had  already  en- 
gaged the  attention  of  philosophers,  as  we  have  seen.  Since 
the  time  of  Xenophanes,  at  least,  most  of  the  cosmologists 
had  asserted  a  distinction  between  mere  opinion  and  truth ; 
and  some  of  them,  like  Empedocles,  had  constructed  the- 
ories on  the  nature  of  sensation  and  thought.  But  all  such 
inquiries  had  been  subsidiary  to  the  main  problem  of  dis- 
covering the  reality  of  the  natural  world ;  and  the  authors 
were  seemingly  led  to  examine  the  matter  either  in  order 
to  suggest  that  their  own  doctrine  was  true  while  that  of 
previous  writers  was  mere  opinion,  or  to  show  how  the 
principles  of  their  cosmology  operated  in  that  part  of  the 
world  which  exists  in  the  form  of  human  animals.  But 
in  the  Socratic  age,  the  possibility  of  knowing  anything 
was  assailed,  and  thereby  the  very  life  of  philosophy  was 
brought  into  jeopardy,  so  that  the  epistemological  prob- 
lem became  one  of  the  first  subjects  of  investigation  and 
was  discussed  on  its  own  merits.  Moreover  it  inevitably 
induced  the  question  of  the  nature  and  validity  of  the 
processes  of  pure  thought  or  reason.  The  separation  of 

C  241  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

this  logical  problem  from  the  foregoing  epistemological 
one  is  difficult  and  perhaps  impossible  in  the  end,  and 
this  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  it;  but  we  can  differentiate 
them  sufficiently  for  our  present  purpose  by  understand- 
ing epistemology  to  be  an  inquiry  into  the  process  by  which 
the  mind  as  subject  is  presented  with  objects,  and  logic 
an  inquiry  into  the  process  by  which  the  mind  manipulates 
its  presentations.  Now  logical  considerations  had  been 
introduced  by  Parmenides  and  employed  to  a  large  extent 
by  Zeno,  an  older  contemporary  of  Socrates,  though  usu- 
ally classed  in  the  presocratic  period.  But  the  addition  of 
the  logical  to  the  epistemological  problem  was  an  increas- 
ingly prominent  trait  of  the  later  period.  These  inquiries, 
with  many  secondary  ramifications,  such  as  those  concern- 
ing the  nature  of  speech  or  the  emotions,  form  various 
aspects  of  the  general  subject  of  the  human  mind;  and  we 
may  therefore  group  them  together  as  psychological  in 
the  literal  sense  of  the  term. 

In  the  second  place,  the  philosophers  of  this  period  took 
up  the  serious  study  of  human  existence.  Here  again  the 
way  had  been  prepared  by  the  cosmologists,  most,  if  not 
all,  of  whom  had  related  the  life  of  man  in  some  way  to 
the  supreme  life  of  the  world.  Indeed  it  is  probable  both 
inherently  and  from  the  expressions  of  the  individual 
authors  that  they  believed  an  understanding  of  nature 
implied  a  proper^way  of  living  or  at  least  a  correct  view 
of  man's  existence^But  whereas  the  method  of  these  early 
thinkers  had  been  to  investigate  the  essential  property  of 
the  world  and  from  this  draw  the  necessary  implications 
for  human  beings,  their  successors  in  the  following  period 
studied  mankind  per  se  and  tried  to  determine  its  inherent 
constitution.  In  so  doing,  they  discussed  for  the  first  time 
the  real  problem  of  ethics,  and  raised  it  to  the  position  of 

C  242  H 


FIRST  AND  SECOJU)  PERIODS 

a  principal  subject  in  philosophy]^  Moreover,  the  new 
psychological  data  seemed  to  suggest  that  a  person  was  not 
so  much  a  certain  quantity  of  matter  controlled  by  the 
laws  of  nature  as  a  psychic  entity  influenced  and  im- 
pressed by  others  of  its  kind ;  and  hence  these  same  think- 
ers were  led  to  believe  that  thejife  of  a  single_squl  de- 
pended less  upon  its  connection  with  the  material  world 
than  upon  the  organized  group  xjf  persons  with  whom  it 
was  thrown.  And  this  reflective  attitude  accorded  well 
with  the  traditions  and  practices  of  Greek  society,  in 
which  the  corporation  normally  ranked  above  its  mem- 
bers. So  when  human  life  became  a  subject  of  conscious 
interest,  it  was  bound  to  include  a  question  as  to  the  nature 
and  the  best  condition  of  the  social  group;  and  as  the 
unit  of  organization  at  the  time  was  the  city-state  or 
polis,  the  discussion  of  this  question  was  called  politics. 
Many  of  the  chief  thinkers  in  the  previous  period  had  been 
more  or  less  practically  and  prominently  identified  with 
political  affairs,  and  a  few  had  formulated  brief  doctrines, 
like  that  of  Heraclitus  on  "what  is  common."  But  the 
joining  of  the  ethical  and  the  political  problems,  and  the 
serious  theoretical  investigation  of  them  was  a  character- 
istic feature  of  the  Socratic  period.  To  probably  all  the 
writers  of  this  period  these  two  lines  of  inquiry,  the 
ethical  and  the  political,  would  be  only  different  aspects 
of  the  same  general  subject,  which  would  be  thought  of  as 
the  good  life  or  living  well.  We  can  remember,  for  in- 
stance, that  Plato  in  his  search  for  justice  was  compelled 
to  found  a  city  for  it,  and  that  the  conclusion  of  Aris- 
totle's Nicomachean  Ethics  was  also  the  preface  to  his 
work  on  Politics.  But  since  that  day  the  two  topics  have 
lost  this  intimate  connection,  and  the  English  language 
has  no  convenient  term  to  cover  them  both. 

C  243  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

From  the  Greek  point  of  view  there  were  thus  two 
tendencies  that  distinguish  the  Socratic  period  of  phi- 
losophy: the  logico-epistemological  and  the  ethico- 
political,  which  developed  from  germs  that  were  created 
philosophically  in  the  preceding  period.  The  essential 
theme  of  the  former  was  knowledge,  of  the  latter,  conduct. 
They  were  both  concerned  with  the  life  of  man,  and  they 
had  of  course  many  common  points,  the  specific  nature 
of  which  depended  on  the  doctrine  of  individual  think- 
ers; for  example,  the  ethical  treatises  of  Plato  and 
Aristotle  consider  the  theoretic  life,  which  presupposes 
knowledge,  and  Socrates  identified  goodness  with  knowl- 
edge. Nevertheless  they  remained  two  different  fields  of 
investigation — or  perhaps  it  would  be  better  to  say  that 
they  became  more  and  more  independent  of  each  other 
as  the  period  advanced. 

This  conscious  division  of  philosophy  into  departments 
was  a  formal  characteristic  of  the  Socratic  period.  I  should 
hardly  call  it  a  tendency — it  was  not  substantial  enough 
to  affect  the  views  of  any  authors.  But  it  is  worth  noticing 
by  way  of  contrast  with  the  earlier  speculation.  The  cos- 
mologists  had  set  about  investigating  nature  and  they 
made  no  distinctions  between  the  various  manifestations 
of  the  material  principle;  even  human  nature  was  still 
nature.  But  the  Sophistic  age  discovered  that  there  was  a 
principle  in  man  which  could  not  be  demonstrated  else- 
where in  the  world;  sometimes  they  thought  of  it  con- 
cretely as  custom  or  legal  establishments,  and  sometimes 
abstractly  as  intelligence.  Moreover  the  Sophists  propa- 
gated a  utilitarian  spirit,  which  tended  to  enhance  con- 
sideration of  the  practical  aspect  of  the  intelligence  and 
to  heighten  the  contrast  between  this  and  the  apparently 
useless  investigation  of  nature.  Hence  the  Socratic  period 

C  244  3 


FIRST  AND  SECOND  PERIODS 

started  the  first  rift  in  philosophy  by  setting  nature  aside 
and  inquiring  into  the  life  of  man.  But  even  that  topic 
proved  too  large  to  be  handled  as  a  whole  by  systematic 
thinkers;  perhaps  we  may  say  that  Plato  attempted  it  in 
the  Republic,  but  if  he  did,  the  publication  of  his  later 
logical  Dialogues  must  be  taken  as  evidence  of  his  con- 
viction that  human  life  could  not  be  compressed  within 
the  compass  of  a  single  work.  It  seems  probable  that 
Democritus  also  divided  his  labors  into  several  distinct 
fields  or  subjects,  and  of  course  that  was  the  method 
followed  by  Aristotle.  But  meanwhile  the  subjects  handled 
by  cosmology  had  been  taken  up  again  into  philosophy, 
though  they  also  had  had  to  be  grouped  into  separate  de- 
partments, such  as  physics  and  astronomy.  And  thus  at  the 
end  of  the  Socratic  period,  we  notice  first  that  philosophy 
had  been  thoroughly  departmentalized,  and  secondly  that 
philosophy  still  included  what  we  think  of  as  science. 


CHAPTER    II 

SCIENTIFIC  FOUNDATIONS  OF 
COSMOLOGY 

The  predominant  tendency  of  the  first  period  in  Greek 
philosophy  has  been  denned  as  the  impulse  to  investigate 
and  explain  natural  regularities ;  and  we  have  also  found 
that  these  inquiries  were  not  divided  into  separate  sec- 
tions. Hence  we  should  expect  that,  while  particular  au- 
thors might  be  exceptionally  attracted  to  particular  phases 
of  nature,  and  all  of  them  might  concentrate  their  ener- 
gies chiefly  on  an  aspect  of  the  world  in  which  regularity 
was  most  obvious,  yet  they  would  manifest  an  eagerness 
to  uncover  similar  secrets  in  all  features  of  their  environ- 
ment. In  other  words,  there  ought  to  be  a  far  greater 
scientific  activity  than  could  be  guessed  by  one  who  limits 
his  interests  to  their  philosophical  theories.  And  that  is 
precisely  what  surprises  us  when  we  leave  the  histories  of 
philosophy,  and  dig  about  in  the  literary  remains  and 
traditions  of  the  period  or  turn  to  the  histories  of  the  var- 
ious sciences. 

We  do  these  early  thinkers  a  grave  injustice  if  we 
imagine  that  their  theories  about  the  ultimate  constitution 
of  the  world  were  mere  primitive  speculations,  fabricated 
by  people  who  were  cursed  to  an  unusual  degree  with  idle 
curiosity  and  who  turned  their  myth-making  fancy  to 
illegitimate  uses  in  scientific  fields.  On  the  contrary,  there 
lay  behind  the  doctrines  that  reach  up  into  the  region  of 

C2463 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

philosophy  a  great  substructure  of  careful  observation 
and  patient  research,  which  is  frequently  overlooked. 
Quite  recently  much  of  this  has  been  brought  to  light  by 
various  scholars,  and  it  seems  worthwhile  to  summarize 
their  results  as  briefly  as  possible,  both  in  order  to  get 
a  better  picture  of  the  men  whose  views  we  have  been 
studying  and  also  in  order  to  mark  the  progressive  accumu- 
lation of  data  which  influenced  philosophy. 

At  the  outset  it  is  well  to  recall  once  more  that  the  habit 
of  accurate  observation  had  been  a  Greek  characteristic 
long  before  there  was  anything  worthy  the  name  of  Greek 
science.  Even  in  Homer  we  can  see  an  instinct  for  realistic 
description  of  nature  that  is  foreign  to  the  oriental  litera- 
tures, and  the  same  impulse  is  more  apparent  in  Hesiod. 
Moreover  the  remains  of  early  Greek  art,  especially  a 
series  of  vases  from  the  seventh  and  sixth  centuries  b.c, 
exhibit  a  minuteness  of  anatomical  observation  and  an 
accuracy  of  rendering  animal  forms  that  are  lacking  in 
Babylonian  and  Egyptian  art.  All  this  simply  means  that 
the  Greeks  as  a  race  were  given  to  noticing  with  attentive- 
ness  the  objects  of  their  environment,  and  that  they  would 
therefore  store  up  a  wealth  of  detailed  knowledge.  But 
such  knowledge  is  not  what  we  mean  by  science,  and  it 
could  not  become  science  as  long  as  nature  was  believed 
to  be  ruled  by  powers  whose  actions  could  never  be  pre- 
dicted. No  matter  how  much  astronomical  lore  was  avail- 
able, there  could  be  no  astronomy  while  people  supposed 
that  the  sun-god  might  decide  at  any  time  to  hide  his  face 
or  to  leave  his  course.  Nor  could  "the  accurate  portrayal 
of  a  lion's  dentition,  the  correct  numbering  of  a  fish's 
scales  or  the  close  study  of  the  lie  of  the  feathers  on  the 
head,  and  the  pads  on  the  feet,  of  a  bird  of  prey"  lead 
to  biology,  if  one  supposed  that  species  might  be  con- 

C  247  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

founded  by  the  production  of  centaurs,  satyrs  and  other 
unnatural  monstrosities.  Science  is  based  upon  the  pre- 
supposition of  a  regular,  uniform  nature,  so  that  any  par- 
ticular phenomenon  may  be  regarded  as  typical  of  its 
class,  and  generalization  becomes  possible.  It  was  just 
this  appreciation  of  the  regularity  of  the  world  and  the 
consequent  possibility  of  generalization  that  is  found  in 
the  work  of  Thales  and  his  successors,  and  that  started 
Greek  science  on  its  way. 

We  also  have  to  remember  that  undoubtedly  the  earliest 
Greek  scientists  drew  on  the  learning  stored  up  in  the 
ancient  civilizations  of  Babylon  and  Egypt;  and  specifi- 
cally it  seems  probable  that  their  debt  to  these  foreign 
centers  of  culture  consisted  in  the  Babylonian  astronom- 
ical cycles  and  the  Egyptian  art  of  mensuration.  Now  such 
data  imply  some  degree  of  generalization;  the  Babylonian 
priests  were  in  the  habit  of  predicting  eclipses  on  the  basis 
of  their  records,  and  the  Egyptian  surveyors  could  set  up 
right  angles  or  find  the  area  of  fields  anywhere  by  general 
methods.  But  the  purpose  of  all  this  knowledge  was  prac- 
tical, and  therefore  the  knowledge  itself  did  not  advance 
beyond  practical  needs.  But  what  we  think  of  as  science 
does  not  depend  on  a  bread-and-butter  impulse,  and  is  not 
limited  to  the  demands  of  business.  It  springs  from  a 
desire  to  know,  whether  the  knowledge  shall  be  capable 
of  being  put  to  extraneous  uses  or  not.  And  this  is  what 
differentiates  the  Greek  contributions  in  this  field  from 
those  of  other  ancient  civilizations,  for  they  first  mani- 
fested this  purpose  to  know  the  nature  of  the  world.  In 
a  sense  it  makes  little  difference  whether  we  grant  or  refuse 
the  title  of  science  to  the  Egyptian  and  Babylonian 
achievements,  for  that  is  a  matter  of  words.  It  is,  however, 
legitimate  to  point  out  that  these  early  accomplishments 

r.  248  n 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

in  the  valleys  of  the  Nile  and  the  Euphrates  were  not  fol- 
lowed by  fruitful  results  and  never  grew  into  systems  of 
knowledge.  And  we  do  need  to  remember  that  mankind 
is  indebted  to  the  Greeks  alone  for  developing,  stating  and 
exercising  that  single  motive  to  intellectual  understand- 
ing, which  has  formed  the  essence  of  science. 

In  this  connection  there  is  one  further  general  point 
which  ought  to  be  considered  before  we  take  up  the  scien- 
tific accomplishments  of  the  early  Greek  philosophers,  and 
it  is  this ;  does  science,  as  we  think  of  it,  necessarily  include 
knowledge  of  causes'?  Now  it  is  obvious  that  pure  mathe- 
matics does  not  deal  with  causes  at  all;  but  the  physical 
sciences  always  attempt  to  discover  the  causes  of  any  facts 
of  which  they  take  cognizance.  The  geologist  not  only 
learns  all  he  can  about  earthquakes,  for  example,  but  he 
also  endeavors  to  discover  the  conditions  that  produce 
them.  The  chemist  investigates  the  properties  of  crystals, 
but  a  part  of  his  investigation  is  an  inquiry  into  the  atomic 
arrangements  by  which  crystals  are  formed.  In  other 
words,  the  physical  scientist  finds  that  causation  is  a  uni- 
formity of  nature,  which  it  is  his  professed  business  to 
investigate.  A  known  causation  thus  becomes  a  fact,  which 
can  be  stated  in  general  terms,  like  any  other  fact  which 
is  within  the  purview  of  the  science.  But  in  generalizing, 
the  natural  scientist  has  found  it  possible  to  express  a 
large  number  of  facts,  processes,  relations,  etc.,  in  mathe- 
matical formulae.  This  can  take  place  only  when  the 
data  have  been  thoroughly  investigated  and  the  variations 
of  objects  under  different  conditions  have  been  reduced 
to  the  form  of  invariable  sequences.  Hence  physics,  which 
is  the  oldest  of  these  sciences  and  to  which  exact  compu- 
tations were  applied  as  early  as  Pythagoras,  is  probably 
the  most  mathematical ;  chemistry  less  so;  and  biology,  the 

C  249  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

newest,  is  least  mathematical  of  all.  Now  the  highly  de- 
veloped state  of  physics,  both  terrestrial  and  celestial,  at 
the  present  day  sometimes  makes  it  difficult  for  us  to 
appreciate  the  scientific  character  of  the  early  contribu- 
tions to  the  subject,  so  halting,  so  partial,  and  even  so 
replete  with  positive  error  do  they  seem  to  us.  Yet  we 
should  be  on  our  guard  against  giving  way  to  such  a  feel- 
ing, lest  we  fall  into  the  mistake  of  supposing  our  present 
science  to  be  final.  Scientists  do  not  claim  to  know  the 
whole  truth  about  nature,  and  they  are  always  ready  to 
accept  corrections  of  their  theories,  when  confronted 
with  new  evidence.  Science  is  a  progress  of  knowledge, 
and  the  fact  that  one  stage  is  superseded  by  another 
should  not  lead  the  latter  to  deny  the  title  of  science  to 
the  former.  It  would  be  as  absurd  for  us  from  our  superior 
Copernican  vantage  ground  to  delete  the  name  of  Ptolemy 
from  the  honor  roll  of  astronomy  as  it  would  have  been 
for  Ptolemy  to  do  the  same  for  Pythagoras.  But  unless  we 
arrogate  to  ourselves  the  pretension  of  perfect  truth,  we 
have  no  right  to  oust  from  science  those  who  did  not  know 
what  we  know  or  think  we  know.  Hence  we  cannot  insist 
that  Thales  should  have  understood  the  "true"  cause  of 
eclipses  if  he  is  to  have  a  place  in  astronomy,  or  that 
Empedocles  should  have  recognized  the  same  nature  of 
sensation  as  is  received  by  modern  physiology.  What  we 
do  expect  in  a  scientist  is  an  attempt  to  determine  causes 
as  well  as  other  natural  uniformities  at  the  instigation  of 
an  impulse  to  know  the  world. 

We  have  now  briefly  compared  Ionian  science  with 
previous  Greek  knowledge  of  the  world,  with  contempo- 
rary oriental  knowledge  of  the  world,  and  with  our  modern 
scientific  knowledge,  and  we  can  summarize  our  conclu- 
sions as  follows.  Into  the  composition  of  this  early  sci- 

C  250  ] 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

ence,  apart  from  a  certain  content  of  facts,  there  went 
two  fundamental  elements.  The  first  was  the  discovery 
of  natural  regularity,  which  implied  an  order  running 
through  the  entire  world,  so  that  a  fact  was  not  an  isolated 
thing  but  a  piece  of  a  uniform  whole,  and  thus  itself  a 
uniformity  that  could  be  stated  in  general  terms  true  yes- 
terday, today,  and  tomorrow.  The  second  condition  was 
the  desire  to  use  such  facts  to  obtain  further  facts,  entirely 
apart  from  the  question  whether  they  were  immediately 
practical  or  not,  but  simply  for  the  purpose  of  gaining 
knowledge.  These  are  the  impelling  factors  whose  particu- 
lar manifestations  we  shall  now  attempt  to  follow  in  the 
various  authors  with  the  understanding  that  the  deficiency 
of  their  results  as  compared  with  present  knowledge  shall 
not  occasion  impatience  at  their  efforts  to  comprehend  the 
true  nature  of  the  world. 

Thales'  most  famous  scientific  achievement  was  his  pre- 
diction of  an  eclipse  of  the  sun.  We  have  previously  con- 
cluded that  the  historical  evidence  for  this  prediction  is 
sufficiently  strong  to  warrant  our  acceptance  of  it.  But 
there  is  little  to  justify  the  supposition  that  Thales  under- 
stood the  true  nature  or  cause  of  eclipses;  and  his  pre- 
diction was  probably  based  on  Babylonian  astronomical 
periods.  There  is  some  plausibility  in  attributing  to 
Thales  also  the  discovery  of  the  inequality  of  the  four 
astronomical  seasons  as  determined  by  the  solstices  and 
the  equinoxes ;  but  we  cannot  feel  sure  about  that.  Thales 
also  busied  himself  with  geometrical  problems,  the  data 
for  which  he  probably  learned  from  the  Egyptians;  but 
he  quite  certainly  advanced  beyond  the  empirical  rules, 
which  he  would  learn  in  Egypt,  and  the  general  methods 
which  he  adopted  were  in  reality  the  beginning  of  scien- 
tific geometry.  Exactly  what  these  methods  were  or  what 

C251 3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

form  the  geometrical  discoveries  of  Thales  took,  it  is  now 
impossible  to  determine.  Certain  feats  of  measurement, 
such  as  determining  the  distance  of  ships  at  sea,  were  at- 
tributed to  him  by  tradition,  and  Eudemus,  a  pupil  of  Aris- 
totle, who  wrote  a  history  of  geometry,  supposed  that  he 
knew  the  propositions  which  would  seem  to  be  involved 
in  the  solution  of  these  problems.  Although  it  is  almost 
certain  that  Thales  did  not  enunciate  these  theorems  in 
the  form  in  which  they  existed  at  the  time  of  Eudemus, 
yet  I  see  no  good  reason  to  doubt  that  the  tradition  on 
which  Eudemus  worked  was  substantially  correct.  We  may 
accordingly  assume  that  Thales  worked  out  problems  in 
which  these  elementary  propositions  were  implied  and 
thus  originated  general  methods,  without  stating  the  prop- 
ositions in  the  general  terms  which  later  became  usual.  The 
following  are  the  theorems  attributed  to  him :  ( 1 )  that  a 
circle  is  bisected  by  its  diameter,  (2)  that  the  angles  at 
the  base  of  an  isosceles  triangle  are  similar  (archaic  for 
"equal"),  (3)  that  if  two  straight  lines  cut  one  another, 
the  vertically  opposite  angles  are  equal,  (4)  that  if  two 
triangles  have  two  angles  and  one  side  respectively  equal, 
the  triangles  are  equal  in  every  respect.  There  were  other 
astronomical  and  geometrical  achievements  ascribed  to 
Thales,  but  they  rest  on  even  more  untrustworthy  evi- 
dence than  the  foregoing,  and  we  shall  not  delay  over 
them.  Those  we  have  already  noticed  are  enough  to  indi- 
cate that  Thales  employed  general  methods  and  was  a 
man  of  science  in  our  sense  of  the  word. 

The  name  of  Anaximander,  like  that  of  his  predecessor, 
is  associated  with  certain  practical  inventions.  He  is 
credited  by  some  authors  with  having  discovered  the 
gnomon,  a  vertical  post  set  in  a  horizontal  plane,  used  for 
determining  the  solstices  and  equinoxes;  it  is,  however, 

C  252  ] 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

most  unlikely  that  Anaximander  invented  this  instru- 
ment, though  it  is  possible  that  he  made  improvements 
on  it  and  adapted  it  to  other  uses,  such  as  telling  the  time 
of  day.  There  is  much  more  plausibility  in  the  tradition 
that  Anaximander  constructed  the  first  map  of  the  earth; 
and  Hecateus  is  said  to  have  corrected  this  map.  But  the 
scientific  achievements  of  the  second  Milesian  thinker 
were  chiefly  concerned  with  astronomy,  and  in  this  field 
he  showed  himself  an  original  thinker  of  the  first  order. 
In  particular,  his  theory  that  the  earth  swings  free  in 
the  center  of  the  world,  held  in  its  place  by  "its  equal 
distance  from  everything"  marks  an  enormous  advance 
over  traditional  ideas,  and  is  even  far  superior  to  the 
theories  of  his  fellow  Ionian  scientists.  Now  it  has  been 
suggested  that  this  doctrine,  as  well  as  several  other  points 
in  the  cosmology  of  Anaximander,  can  be  explained  on  the 
analogy  of  eddies  of  wind  and  water,  in  which  heavy 
bodies  tend  toward  the  center  and  light  ones  toward  the 
circumference ;  and  this  explanation  seems  to  me  the  only 
satisfactory  one.  If  we  accept  it,  we  must  consider  Anaxi- 
mander to  have  been  a  keen  observer  of  natural  processes, 
and  an  exceptionally  keen  analytical  thinker.  He  must 
have  first  carefully  watched  the  effects  of  eddies;  he  must 
have  then  been  able  to  formulate  the  mechanical  principles 
in  some  general  fashion;  and  he  must  finally  have  trans- 
ferred these  principles  analogically  to  his  concept  of  the 
world  as  a  vortex.  Surely  that  is  no  mean  achievement  for 
the  second  scientist.  But  such  a  picture  is  borne  out  by  his 
other  theories,  such  as  those  concerning  the  circular  nature 
of  the  heavenly  bodies  and  their  relative  sizes.  Moreover, 
Anaximander  was  evidently  interested  in  discovering  why 
things  act  as  they  do.  He  was  not  satisfied  with  descrip- 
tion ;  he  wanted  to  find  causes,  and  in  this  also  we  can  see 

C  253  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

the  true  scientific  impulse.  For  in  his  attempt  to  assign 
the  cause  of  eclipses,  of  the  moon's  phases,  of  thunder  and 
lightning,  we  can  see  that  he  uses  his  doctrines  of  what 
the  heavenly  bodies  are.  In  other  words,  the  questions  how 
they  act  now,  what  they  are,  and  how  they  came  to  be 
what  they  are,  were  inseparable  aspects  of  one  fundamen- 
tally naturalistic  point  of  view. 

Anaximander  also  developed  a  remarkable  biological 
theory,  the  chief  points  of  which  are  as  follows :  "Living 
creatures  arose  from  the  moist  element  as  it  was  evapo- 
rated by  the  sun.  Originally  man  was  born  from  animals 
of  another  species;  for,  while  other  animals  quickly  find 
food  by  themselves,  man  alone  requires  a  long  period  of 
suckling,  and  hence  would  never  have  survived  if  he  had 
originally  been  as  he  is  now.  The  first  human  beings  arose 
in  the  inside  of  fishes  and  were  reared  like  sharks."  In 
interpreting  such  a  startling  theory,  we  are  apt  to  jump 
at  conclusions;  but  we  ought  to  be  on  our  guard  against 
this,  and  especially  so  when  there  is  a  similar  modern 
theory,  which  can  be  used  to  fill  in  the  gaps  or  be  read 
between  the  lines  of  the  ancient  one.  This  means  in  the 
present  instance  that  we  cannot  attribute  to  Anaximander 
the  theory  of  evolution,  which  arose  in  the  last  century 
and  which  is  based  on  perfectly  definite  evidence  that  was 
quite  unknown  to  the  ancient  Greeks ;  but  it  does  not  mean 
that  we  cannot  attempt  to  compare  particular  doctrines 
of  ancient  thinkers  with  particular  items  in  modern  the- 
ories. Pursuing  such  a  policy,  we  notice  in  the  biological 
theory  given  above  the  suggestion  of  a  development  of 
animal  species.  This  is  in  line  with  Anaximander's  general 
belief  in  a  growing  nature,  a  process  by  which  an  original 
body  gradually  developed  through  successive  differentia- 
tions into  qualitatively  distinct  species.  Again  there  is  the 

C  254  3 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

hint  that  man  cannot  represent  the  original  type  of  animal 
owing  to  the  difficulties  of  his  early  nurture.  This  means 
that  man  must  be  the  result  or  end  of  a  development  of 
species,  and  in  this  development  Anaximander  evidently 
believed  that  environing  conditions  played  a  large  part. 
Hence  the  earliest  beings  must  have  been  at  least  capable 
of  meeting  the  difficulties  of  their  environment,  which 
suggested  the  manner  in  which  certain  sharks  nourish  and 
protect  their  young.  This  last  point  is  a  highly  significant 
one  for  our  present  purpose,  for  it  indicates  the  scientific 
inquisitiveness  with  which  he  pursued  his  investigations. 
Anaximenes  appears  to  have  been  of  quite  a  different 
type  from  his  predecessors.  No  practical  inventions  can 
be  attributed  to  him,  and  he  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
an  original  investigator  to  any  appreciable  degree.  He  was 
a  thinker,  a  systematizer  of  theories,  and  we  can  best 
imagine  him  as  engrossed  in  the  task  of  making  the  doc- 
trines of  his  School  consistent.  In  other  words,  there  was 
now  an  institution  and  a  body  of  knowledge,  and  Anaxi- 
menes is  to  be  regarded  as  the  head  of  this  organization, 
confronted  with  the  need  of  consolidating  its  tenets.  And 
this  position,  if  we  may  hazard  a  mere  guess,  accorded 
with  his  natural  disposition.  He  did,  to  be  sure,  originate 
theories  on  the  nature  and  movement  of  the  celestial 
bodies,  such  as  that  the  earth,  sun,  and  moon,  being  flat, 
float  on  the  air  like  leaves — an  idea  which  probably  came 
also  from  eddies  of  wind;  he  did  too  speculate  on  the 
causes  of  celestial  phenomena,  which  he  referred  back 
through  successive  stages  to  a  unified  organic  principle 
imagined  after  the  analogy  of  an  individual  soul.  But  we 
feel  that  all  such  theories  at  bottom  are  not  so  much  the 
result  of  his  own  personal  observations  as  of  a  logical 
quality  of  mind,  arranging  and  systematizing  previous 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

data.  Nor  should  we  minimize  the  scientific  character  of 
such  work,  for  science  certainly  grows  by  such  processes 
as  well  as  by  the  accumulation  of  facts.  The  best  example 
of  this  tendency  in  Anaximenes  in  his  theory  of  rarefaction 
and  condensation.  Anaximander  had  held  that  the  oppo- 
site bodies,  known  as  the  hot  and  the  cold,  had  originally 
been  parts  of  one  Boundless  whole  from  which  they  had 
been  separated  out.  But  such  a  doctrine,  when  thought 
about  clearly,  involves  certain  difficulties;  if  the  opposite 
bodies  were  already  contained  in  the  Boundless,  then  how 
could  the  Boundless  be  a  whole,  a  unity?  And  if  they  were 
created  in  the  process  of  separating  out,  would  not  the 
process  be  more  than  mere  separation?  Accordingly, 
Anaximenes  adopted  the  view  that  the  original  mass 
differentiated  itself  quantitatively  in  two  directions,  and 
the  opposite  bodies  in  the  old  sense  gave  place  to  opposite 
processes.  So  the  one  substance  could  be  left  and  its  appar- 
ently different  forms  could  be  explained  as  mere  differ- 
ences of  density,  that  is,  of  amount.  This  theory  is  ob- 
viously an  immense  improvement  on  the  old  Milesian 
doctrine,  and  as  Professor  Burnet  remarks,  it  makes  that 
doctrine  consistent  for  the  first  time.  Surely  it  is  beside 
the  point  to  argue  that  modern  chemistry  knows  of  no 
such  transformations  as  Anaximenes  supposed  and  there- 
fore his  differences  of  density  really  do  imply  differences 
of  quality.  We  may  say,  if  we  choose,  that  such  changes 
cannot  be  purely  quantitative  but  must  be  regarded  as 
tropic;  but  that  is  to  judge  Anaximenes  on  the  basis  of  our 
present  scientific  ignorance.  The  tendency  of  science, 
whether  we  look  to  Anaximenes  or  to  the  modern  electron- 
theory,  is  to  reduce  all  differences  in  things  to  differences 
of  amount,  capable  of  numerical  specification;  and  it  is 
surely  a  remarkable  tribute  to  the  Greek  intellect  that  this 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

tendency  was  observed  so  early  in  the  course  of  its  scien- 
tific inquiry.  We  must  admit  that  Anaximenes'  theory 
has  not  yet  been  experimentally  verified;  but  neither  has 
Anaximander's  theory  that  there  are  eternal,  irreducible 
qualities.  And  meanwhile  science  is  proceeding  on  the 
method  of  Anaximenes.  His  position  therefore  is  the  first 
concrete  illustration,  in  a  series  that  is  constantly  length- 
ening, of  the  immense  service  rendered  to  science  by  the 
sheer  logical  imagination. 

No  one  did  more,  or  perhaps  as  much,  for  Greek  sci- 
ence as  Pythagoras;  and  yet  it  is  impossible  to  ascribe  any 
particular  scientific  discovery  to  him  with  certitude.  He 
founded  a  society  that  carried  the  burning  torch  of  scien- 
tific curiosity  and  investigation  through  two  centuries  and 
then  handed  it  on  to  the  Academy.  But  such  were  the 
social  regulations  of  the  Order  that  we  do  not  know  the 
contributions  of  particular  members,  or  even  the  precise 
influence  which  the  Order  as  a  whole  exercised  on  the  cul- 
ture of  Greece,  although  the  indications  are  that  it  was 
very  great.  Under  these  circumstances  we  can  do  no  more 
than  exhibit  the  scientific  achievements  which  may  with 
some  plausibility  be  referred  either  to  Pythagoras  him- 
self or  to  the  Order  in  the  early  years  of  its  history.  These 
fall  under  four  modern  disciplines :  mathematics,  geome- 
try, harmonics,  and  astronomy. 

It  seems  clear  that  the  earliest  Pythagoreans  took  up  the 
study  of  numbers  and  founded  the  science  of  arithmetic. 
But  that  discipline  was  not  exactly  what  is  embraced  under 
the  same  name  today.  It  was,  in  the  first  place,  a  pure 
theory  of  numbers  and  did  not  include  practical  prob- 
lems in  calculation,  which  at  least  in  Plato's  day,  formed 
the  subject  matter  of  another  discipline  called  logistic. 
But,  secondly,  the  numbers  envisaged  by  the  Pythago- 

C  257  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

reans  were  apparently  things  or  actually  existing  objects, 
probably  conceived  as  geometrical  figures  somewhat  after 
the  patterns  of  the  dots  on  dice.  Hence  the  Pythagorean 
theory  of  numbers  was  neither  practical  nor  abstract  in 
the  modern  sense ;  it  was  geometrical.  It  seems  to  have  con- 
sidered numbers,  first  in  their  serial  progression  (unit, 
tetraktys,  etc.),  secondly  in  their  numerical  composition 
(odd,  even,  prime,  etc.),  and  thirdly  in  their  geometrical 
form  (triangular,  oblong,  etc.). 

The  last  of  these  aspects  immediately  suggests  the  close 
connection  that  always  obtained  in  the  Pythagorean  Order 
between  arithmetic  and  geometry.  A  moment's  reflection 
will  show  that  this  relationship  would  tend  to  impede 
progress  in  the  former  but  not  in  the  latter;  and  it  was  in 
fact  in  geometry  that  the  Pythagoreans  rendered  their 
most  fruitful  and  enduring  service  to  Greek  science.  In 
the  geometrical  conception  of  numbers  (as  well  as  in 
the  cosmological  application  of  the  number  doctrine),  the 
notions  of  pure  number,  shape,  and  size  tend  to  coalesce ; 
and  therefore  in  the  study  of  numbers  the  Pythagoreans 
were  naturally  led  into  comparisons  of  areas.  For  this  pur- 
pose they  apparently  superimposed  the  smaller  square  (or 
triangle  or  oblong)  directly  on  the  larger,  and  then  studied 
the  remainder.  Hence  arose  problems  of  applying  to  small 
figures  additional  areas  in  order  to  produce  larger  figures 
of  the  same  type  (triangular,  square,  oblong)  ;  the  incre- 
ment was  called  the  gnomon  of  the  smaller  figure,  and  it  is 
easy  to  see  that  in  each  type  of  figure  there  would  be  a 
regular  series  of  gnomons.  It  is  evident  that  this  method 
of  comparing  areas  might  be  extended  to  all  sorts  of  geo- 
metrical problems,  of  which  one  of  the  most  obvious 
would  be  that  of  applying  to  a  line  an  area  of  given 
specifications;  and  in  fact  the  "application  of  areas"  be- 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

came  a  well-known  Pythagorean  construction,  utilized 
in  many  different  geometrical  theorems  and  later  ex- 
tended to  conic  sections,  where  it  produced  the  concep- 
tions of  parabola  (application),  hyperbola  (exceeding), 
and  ellipse  (deficiency,  falling  short).  The  most  famous 
Pythagorean  proposition,  which  may  well  be  attributed 
to  Pythagoras  himself,  was  that,  if  you  apply  square 
figures  to  the  sides  of  a  right  triangle,  the  square  on  the 
hypotenuse  is  equal  in  area  to  the  sum  of  the  squares  on 
the  other  two  sides.  We  do  not  know  how  this  proposition 
was  originally  proved,  but  it  is  unlikely  to  have  been  by 
the  demonstration  given  in  Euclid  I,  47. 

Problems  of  this  character  would  suggest  also  the  ques- 
tion of  commensurability  and  it  seems  likely  that  Pytha- 
goras and  the  early  members  of  the  Order  devoted  some 
attention  to  such  matters,  though  it  is  impossible  to  deter- 
mine how  far  they  proceeded.  Another  closely  allied  topic 
was  proportion,  and  it  is  probable  that  Pythagoras  himself 
either  discovered  or  introduced  into  Greece  the  three  means, 
arithmetical,  geometrical,  and  sub-contrary  or  harmonic. 
The  last  of  these  is  connected  with  Pythagoras'  discovery 
of  the  numerical  ratios  between  the  four  fixed  notes  on  the 
lyre,  which  was  one  of  his  greatest  contributions  to  Greek 
science. 

In  astronomy  his  scientific  genius  was  also  manifested, 
for  he  was  the  first  to  assert  the  sphericity  of  the  earth, 
though  he  still  adhered  to  the  geocentric  hypothesis.  Fur- 
thermore, there  is  some  evidence  that  Pythagoras  noticed 
the  independent  movement  of  the  planets,  and  therefore 
distinguished  between  the  diurnal  rotation  from  east  to 
west  and  the  slow  movement  through  the  signs  of  the 
zodiac  from  west  to  east. 

In  this  brief  sketch  of  the  work  of  Pythagoras  I  have 

C  259  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

not  given  a  half  of  the  achievements  that  are  uncritically 
ascribed  to  him  by  later  Greek  authors ;  and  yet  it  must  be 
patent  that  even  if  no  more  than  half  of  what  I  have  seen 
fit  to  refer  to  him  were  really  his,  he  would  still  rank  as 
one  of  the  world's  greatest  scientific  geniuses. 

Of  Xenophanes  there  is  little  to  say  in  the  present  con- 
nection, except  that  he  was  not  a  scientist  at  all ;  he  was 
a  poet,  theologian,  and  reformer,  and  the  cosmological 
ideas  which  are  contained  in  his  Satires  are  probably 
adaptations  of  Ionian  science.  Heraclitus  too  cannot  be 
called  a  scientist,  in  the  strict  sense,  although  he  had  the 
same  faculty  of  logical  imagination  which  marked  the 
thought  of  Anaximenes.  But  this  statement  raises  the 
question  why  we  class  Heraclitus  as  a  philosopher  and 
not  as  a  scientist;  and  it  is  but  the  complement  of  the 
same  question  if  we  ask  why  we  rank  Anaximenes  as  a 
scientist  and  refuse  the  title  to  Heraclitus.  Now  of  course, 
the  boundary  between  science  and  philosophy,  if  there  is 
any  such,  is,  like  that  between  literature  and  philosophy, 
an  ill-defined  and  shadowy  one;  and  the  more  definite 
it  is  made,  the  more  arbitrary  does  it  seem.  Yet  in  prac- 
tice we  recognize  a  valid  distinction  between  the  two;  and 
it  will  be  proper  for  us  to  develop  briefly  the  contrast  be- 
tween Anaximenes  and  Heraclitus,  as  illustrative  of  this 
distinction.  The  scope  of  the  problem  is  narrowed  by  two 
facts ;  first,  that  neither  of  these  thinkers  was  to  any  appre- 
ciable extent  a  first-hand  investigator  of  phenomena;  and 
second,  that  phenomena  appear  in  the  system  of  each  of 
them  as  that  which  is  given  and  which  is  to  be  explained. 
But  it  is  here,  in  the  field  of  phenomena,  that  we  can  first 
discern  a  difference  between  the  two  thinkers;  for  while 
the  data  of  Anaximenes  are  all  physical  and  material, 
those  of  Heraclitus  embrace  also  human  experience  in  all 

C  260  1 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

its  variety — thoughts,  feelings,  actions.  I  am  far  from 
asserting  that  Anaximenes  consciously  excluded  facts  of 
this  kind,  or  that  Heraclitus  recognized  the  full  import 
of  including  them;  for  I  do  not  believe  that  to  be  true. 
The  only  point  to  which  I  am  drawing  attention  is  that 
the  Ephesian  took  cognizance  of  human  experience  while 
the  Milesian  did  not.  It  is,  of  course,  problematic  how  far 
human  experience  is  amenable  to  scientific  treatment, 
though  we  have  certainly  made  some  progress  in  that 
direction  since  the  days  of  Heraclitus.  Yet  probably  in 
the  main  this  subject  is  still  considered  as  belonging  more 
to  the  province  of  philosophy  than  to  that  of  science.  And 
this  raises  a  second  point  of  dissimilarity,  namely,  that 
the  latter  of  these  thinkers  was  led  to  attempt  an  evalua- 
tion of  the  elements  of  experience,  which  is  entirely  lack- 
ing in  his  scientific  predecessor.  When  he  says,  for 
example,  "It  is  not  good  for  men  to  get  all  that  they  wish. 
Sickness  makes  health  pleasant;  evil,  good;  hunger,  abun- 
dance; weariness,  rest,"  he  is  using  his  general  cosmologi- 
cal  doctrine  to  establish  a  theory  of  values :  and  that  is 


within  the  province  of  philosophy7~but  not  of  science. 
Hence  we  may  say  that  Heraclitus — it  is  only  less  ob- 
viously true  of  Xenophanes — was  primarily  a  philosopher 
because  he  included  human  experience  itself  among  his 
data  and  because  he  tried  to  work  out  a  scale  of  human 
values.  Similar  considerations  mutatis  mutandis  would 
suggest  that  Anaximenes  was  preeminently  a  scientist,  and 
that  Pythagoras  was  both  scientist  and  philosopher.  Inci- 
dentally, such  an  arrangement  would  make  Pythagoras 
the  first  philosopher,  and  this  accords  with  the  tradition 
which  ascribes  the  term  to  him.  Finally,  we  ought  to 
acknowledge  that  this  distinction  between  science  and 
philosophy  could  not  have  been  sensed  by  these  Greek 

1:261 3 


V 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

thinkers  whom  we  have  been  examining,  and  the  mere 
classification  of  their  systems  would  be  an  item  too  minute 
to  warrant  our  delaying  over  it,  if  it  did  not  exhibit  the 
significant  expansion  of  the  field  of  intellectual  interest 
and  the  emergence  of  what  we  think  of  as  philosophy  out 
of  what  we  think  of  as  science. 

^>  If  Heraclitus  was  primarily  not  a  scientist,  Parmenides 

in  The  Way  of  Truth  was  not  a  scientist  at  all,  because 
he  did  not  even  include  among  his  data  the  physical  phe- 
v    nomena  which  form  the  subject  matter  of  science.  He  is 

^.  here  a  pure  philosopher.  But  this  is  not  the  case  with  The 

Way  of  Opinion,  which  is  the  ordinary  cosmological  sci- 
ence. Unfortunately  the  fragments  of  this  treatise  are  too 
scanty  to  permit  us  to  determine  with  any  pretense  of 
accuracy  how  much  of  a  scientist  its  author  was.  But  it  is 
possible  to  affirm  at  least  that  in  astronomy  and  in  physi- 
ology (which  was  then  developing  out  of  medicine)  Par- 
menides was  either  an  original  observer  or  else  in  touch 
with  the  latest  observations.  We  are  especially  interested 
in  his  doctrine  that  the  organ  of  thought  is  "the  substance 
of  the  limbs"  (//.eXeW  <f)vcns)  and  that  the  character  of 
thought  is  determined  by  the  mixture  of  elements  in  the 
body.  This  interest  in  the  mechanics  of  thought  is  new, 
and  agrees  with  several  other  indications  that  physiolog- 
ical problems  were  invading  the  traditional  province  of 
cosmology. 

Real  progress  along  these  lines  was  made  by  Alcmeon, 
who  was  also  intimately  connected  with  the  Pythagorean 
society.  He  was  in  fact  the  founder  of  empirical  psychol- 
ogy and  there  is  some  evidence  that  he  practised  dissection. 
He  put  forth  the  view  that  the  brain  was  the  organ  of 
intelligence,  a  view  which  Hippocrates  and  Plato  later 
adopted,  while  Empedocles  and  Aristotle  adhered  to  the 

C  262  ] 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

older  doctrine  that  the  heart  is  the  central  organ  of 
thought.  This  subsequent  divergence  of  opinion  shows  that, 
if  Alcmeon  did  practise  dissection,  he  did  not  carry  it  to 
the  point  of  distinguishing  nerves  from  blood  vessels. 
Nevertheless  he  believed  that  the  peripheral  organs  of 
sense  were  connected  with  the  brain  by  some  kind  of  pas- 
sages, and  he  investigated  each  of  the  special  senses  in  a 
systematic  way.  Moreover  he  distinguished  sense-percep- 
tion from  understanding  or  intelligence;  and  though  he 
has  left  no  explicit  indication  as  to  how  he  would  differ- 
entiate them,  the  word  which  he  uses  for  the  latter 
{^vvvqcri)  suggests  the  notion  of  synthesis  as  the  charac- 
teristic of  intelligence.  Alcmeon  did  not  confine  his 
inquiries  to  the  special  field  of  physiological  psychology; 
but  his  views  on  health,  the  soul,  and  the  heavenly  bodies 
show  that  here  he  was  in  the  main  content  to  adopt  older 
doctrines.  His  pupils,  Acron  and  Pausanias,  carried  on 
his  anatomical  researches,  so  that  he  is  to  be  regarded  not 
merely  as  an  original  contributor  to  science,  but  also  as 
having  given  inspiration  to  a  new  method  which  lived 
after  him  and  continued  to  exert  its  influence  on  later 
generations. 

Greek  science  received  another  great  impetus  in  the 
work  of  Empedocles.  His  influence  was  perhaps  most 
potent  on  the  development  of  biological  knowledge,  but 
his  scientific  achievements  were  by  no  means  limited  to 
that  field.  In  astronomy  he  put  forth  many  interesting 
and  original  hypotheses,  most  of  which,  however,  were  of 
little  lasting  value.  But  he  had  adopted  the  true  explana- 
tion of  solar  eclipses  and  of  the  moon's  light,  which  were 
the  great  discoveries  of  his  age;  and  he  was  aware  that  the 
dajkn£ss,.o£jQightwas Jiot an  exhalation  but  the  shadow 
of  theearth.  Probably  his  most  important  achievement  in 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

this  field  was  his  theory  that  light  travels  and  takes  time 
to  pass  from  one  point  to  another.  But  it  was  in  medicine 
and  biology  that  Empedocles  made  his  greatest  contribu- 
tions to  science.  He  was  the  founder  of  the  Sicilian  School 
of  medicine,  which  Galen  ranks  with  those  of  Cos  and 
Cnidus,  and  his  medical  theories  profoundly  affected  sub- 
sequent philosophy.  In  the  combination  of  exceptionally 
keen  observation  and  brilliant  analogical  reasoning,  Em- 
pedocles approached  so  near  the  experimental  method 
that  it  is  difficult  to  deny  that  he  used  it  (frags.  84,  100)  ; 
but  it  cannot  be  proved  that  he  tried  to  control  and  vary 
the  factors  or  elements  of  the  objects  which  he  investi- 
gated, and  that  seems  to  be  the  essence  of  this  method  as 
now  understood.  It  would  take  too  long  to  catalog  his 
various  biological  doctrines  and  that  is  not  necessary  for 
our  present  purpose.  We  ought,  however,  to  notice  that 
he  believed  in  the  evolution  of  animals  and  clearly  set 
forth  the  principle  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest;  but  his 
doctrine  of  evolution  is  totally  different  from  the  modern 
theory  in  being  largely  based  on  direct  mechanical  control 
exercised  by  cosmological  forces.  Empedocles  also  inves- 
tigated the  five  senses  v  and  attempted  to  differentiate 
thought  and  sensation.  /He  believed  that  all  bodies  are 
composed  of  the  four  elements,  earth,  air,  fire,  and  water, 
and  that  we  perceive  each  of  these  elements  by  means  of 
the  same  element  in  us.  He  thus  originated  the  doctrine 
that  like  perceives  like.  /All  bodies  send  off  images  or 
emanations,  and  all  bodies  have  pores  or  passages  which 
receive  the  emanations  from  without;  but  the  special 
organs  of  sense  are  fitted  with  pores  of  particular  kinds, 
which  receive  only  emanations  which  are  symmetrical 
with  them.  Empedocles  distinguished  thought  and  sen- 
sation in  evidential  value,  but  he  localized  thought  chiefly 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

in  the  blood  around  the  heart  and  failed  to  make  any 
clear  psychological  basis  for  the  distinction  between  it 
and  sensation, 

Anaxagoras  was  credited  by  many  ancient  authors  with 
the  discovery  that  the  moon  shines  by  the  reflected  light 
of  the  sun,  and  the  weight  of  this  testimony  is  so  great 
that  it  is  difficult  to  refuse  credence  to  it.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  fact  was  stated  by  Parmenides  and  by  Empedo- 
cles,  and  that  alone  makes  it  practically  impossible  to  at- 
tribute the  discovery  to  Anaxagoras.  Perhaps  the  most 
likely  hypothesis  is  that  the  Pythagoreans  actually  orig- 
inated the  idea,  and  that  Anaxagoras  was  the  first  to 
expound  it  at  Athens.  He  also  explained  the  phases  of  the 
moon  and  eclipses,  giving  a  fairly  satisfactory  account  of 
these  phenomena  except  that,  as  causes  of  lunar  eclipses, 
he  assumed  dark  bodies  "below  the  moon"  as  well  as  the 
earth,  possibly  on  the  ground  that  occasionally  the 
eclipsed  moon  had  been  observed  while  the  sun  was  still 
above  the  horizon.  But  Anaxagoras  adhered  to  the  old 
notion  of  a  flat  earth,  and  in  most  of  his  astronomy  he 
followed  Anaximenes.  His  cosmology  was  based  on  the 
vortical  principle,  and  to  this  he  seems  to  have  made  one 
fruitful  contribution  in  noticing  the  centrifugal  tendency. 
He  did  not  formulate  the  fact  in  general  terms,  and  there 
appear  to  be  inconsistencies  in  the  application  of  the 
idea;  but  in  fact  he  recognized  both  a  concentration  and 
a  tendency  of  bodies  to  move  away  from  the  center  of  a 
vortex.  Anaxagoras  also  probably  knew  some  mathe- 
matics, and  it  is  likely  that  his  doctrine  of  divisibility 
proceeded  from  a  consideration  of  the  same  problems 
with  which  Zeno  dealt;  but  how  much  of  a  mathematician 
he  was,  our  evidence  does  not  permit  us  to  judge.  He  is 
represented  by  Plutarch  as  engaged  in  the  squaring  of  the 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

circle,  a  problem  which  on  other  evidence  appears  to  have 
been  popular  during  the  latter  part  of  the  century;  and 
Anaxagoras  is  the  first  whose  name  was  associated  with  it. 
In  biological  science,  his  general  principle  that  "there  is  a 
portion  of  everything  in  everything,  except  Mind,  and 
there  are  some  things  in  which  Mind  is  also"  was  the  first 
attempt  to  formulate  the  distinction  between  animate  and 
inanimate  nature.  He  held  that  there  was  Mind  in  plants 
and  animals  as  well  as  in  man,  and  that  it  was  all  the 
same;  it  produced  different  results  or  different  levels  of 
activity  only  in  virtue  of  the  bodily  structures  in  which 
it  residecf>«rAnaxagoras  also  investigated  the  senses  and 
developed  a  theory  of  perception,  in  which  he  opposed 
Empedocles,  holding  that  it  was  the  effect  of  contrary 
ugonjsonixary. 

Oenopides  of  Chios  was  famed  as  a  geometer,  and  two 
propositions  in  the  First  Book  of  Euclid  are  attributed 
to  him  by  Proclus ;  but  his  reputation  cannot  have  been  due 
merely  to  these  simple  theorems,  and  it  seems  likely  that 
what  he  really  did  was  to  introduce  into  Ionia  the  more 
highly  developed  geometry  of  the  Pythagoreans.  He  was 
also  an  astronomer,  and  was  credited  by  Eudemus  with 
discovering  "the  cincture  of  the  zodiac  circle,"  which  may 
mean  the  obliquity  of  the  ecliptic. 

The  arguments  of  Zeno,  with  their  profound  implica- 
tions for  the  notion  of  continuity,  space,  time  and  motion, 
deserve  notice  in  a  review  of  Greek  science.  That  their  full 
import  was  not  appreciated  by  most  of  the  Greek  scien- 
tists is  plain.  But  it  is  not  clear  just  how  much  they  meant 
even  to  their  author. 

Diogenes  of  Apollonia,  although  constructing  a  cos- 
mology in  pursuance  of  the  old  Ionic  tradition,  was  pri- 
marily interested  in  physiology.  His  elaborate  account  of 

C266] 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

the  veins  has  been  preserved  by  Aristotle,  and  he  is  fur- 
ther remarkable  as  being  the  first  to  discuss  memory  and 
reminiscence.  He  also  worked  out  explanations  of  the  five 
senses  and  of  sleep  in  accordance  with  his  general  cos- 
mological  position. 

Meton  of  Athens  was  an  astronomer  whose  greatest 
achievement  was  the  cycle  of  nineteen  years.  His  prob- 
lem was  to  bring  the  calendar  into  conformity  with  solar 
and  lunar  phenomena;  and  it  is  said  that,  while  the  mean 
tropic  year  on  his  calculations  was  30  minutes  1 1  seconds 
too  long,  the  mean  lunar  month  ascertained  on  the  basis 
of  his  figures  is  wrong  by  not  quite  1  minute  54  seconds. 

Hippias  of  Elis,  the  Sophist,  invented  a  curve  known 
as  the  quadratrix,  which  was  used  for  trisecting  any  rec- 
tilineal angle  and  possibly  for  finding  the  length  of  any 
arc  of  a  circle.  The  importance  of  this  curve  lies  in  the 
fact  that  it  took  geometry  beyond  what  were  called  "plane" 
problems  which  could  be  solved  by  ruler  and  compass, 
that  is,  problems  dealing  with  the  straight  line  and  the 
circle.  Antiphon,  another  Sophist,  worked  on  the  squaring 
of  the  circle  by  means  of  inscribing  in  it  a  series  of  regular 
polygons,  each  of  which  has  twice  as  many  sides  as  the 
preceding.  As  directed  toward  the  specific  purpose  of 
squaring  the  circle,  the  method  involved  a  fallacy  so  ob- 
vious that  Aristotle  would  not  deign  to  refute  it ;  but  the 
method  per  se  was  useful  in  developing  the  theory  of 
approximation  and  exhaustion. 

Hippocrates  of  Chios  was,  so  far  as  is  known,  the  first 
to  compile  a  book  of  Elements,  and  he  was  also  the  author 
of  several  important  geometrical  theorems.  He  was  fa- 
mous for  his  work  on  two  great  problems,  the  squaring 
of  lunes  (intended  to  serve  as  a  preliminary  for  the  squar- 
ing of  the  circle),  and  the  doubling  of  the  cube.  He  sue- 

r.2673 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

ceeded  in  squaring  three  particular  kinds  of  lunes,  and  he 
reduced  the  doubling  of  the  cube  to  the  problem  of  finding 
two  mean  proportionals  in  continued  proportion.  But  the 
chief  importance  of  Hippocrates  for  the  general  history 
of  science  lies  in  the  fact  that  he  was  the  first  to  compile 
a  book  of  geometrical  Elements;  and  the  real  import  of 
that  service  should  not  be  obscured  by  his  particular  con- 
tributions to  the  subject  matter  or  by  the  greater  genius 
of  his  successor,  Euclid.  For  the  book  of  Hippocrates 
means  that  geometry  was  establishing  itself  as  a  separate 
discipline,  independent  of  philosophy,  the  first  deductive 
science  to  maintain  a  distinct  existence  of  its  own. 

The  extant  evidence  for  the  thought  of  Leucippus  and 
Democritus  is  unfortunately  so  meager  and  untrustworthy 
as  to  permit  only  the  most  tentative  conclusions  as  to  their 
scientific  achievements.  There  was  a  tradition  in  antiquity 
to  the  effect  that  Democritus  was  a  good  scientist,  and 
titles  of  his  reputed  works  on  all  sorts  of  scientific  sub- 
jects have  been  preserved.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are 
several  points  that  militate  against  such  a  conception  of 
him.  In  the  first  place,  I  have  tried  to  show  elsewhere  that 
the  real  greatness  of  Atomism  lay  in  its  logical  consistency 
rather  than  in  any  notable  contributions  to  natural  knowl- 
edge. And  this  interpretation  is  confirmed  by  the  little 
astronomy  that  may  with  some  probability  be  referred  to 
Leucippus  and  Democritus,  for  it  is  of  a  relatively  re- 
actionary character  and  reminds  us  of  the  early  Ionians. 
Again  the  works  attributed  to  Democritus  were  apparently 
the  corpus  of  the  Treatises  produced  by  members  of  his 
School,  and  by  the  time  these  were  subjected  to  anything 
like  critical  examination,  the  opportunity  for  distinguish- 
ing their  authors  had  passed.  Furthermore,  while  the  great 
originality  of  the  founders  of  Atomism  may  have  been 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

conceptual,  yet  the  naturalistic  bias  of  the  whole  doctrine 
would  have  led  in  the  direction  of  direct  investigation  of 
phenomena  and  so  have  produced  real  scientific  contribu- 
tions from  later  members  of  the  School.  Hence  we  must 
at  least  suspect  the  tradition  of  Democritus'  extraordinary 
scientific  versatility,  while  admitting  that  it  may  still  be 
true. 

If  the  surmise  that  Leucippus  was  the  real  author  of  the 
conception  of  atoms  was  correct,  then  doubtless  to  him  is 
due  the  credit  for  the  simplicity  and  consistency  of  the 
theory;  and  certainly  those  qualities  are  to  be  esteemed 
desiderata  of  science  in  his  case  as  in  that  of  Anaximenes. 
Furthermore,  it  is  likely  that  Leucippus  had  investigated 
sensation  and  adopted  the  notion  of  effluent  images  from 
objects  to  account  for  it.  With  regard  to  Democritus,  we 
may  be  said  to  know  that  he  worked  out  theories  of  sight, 
hearing,  taste,  and  touch,  that  these  theories  rested  on  the 
view  that  like  affects  like,  and  that  they  were  ultimately 
based  on  the  general  mechanical  principle  of  contact, 
which  underlay  the  whole  Atomist  position.  We  are  also, 
I  believe,  justified  in  assuming  that  Democritus  was  a 
mathematician  of  no  mean  rank.  Archimedes  attributed 
to  him  the  propositions  that  a  cone  is  one-third  of  the 
cylinder,  and  a  pyramid  one-third  of  the  prism,  which  has 
the  same  base  and  equal  height.  Also  a  fragment  has  been 
preserved  in  which  Democritus  deals  with  a  specific  case 
of  the  problem  of  spacial  continuity.  Finally  it  is  certain 
that  he  concerned  himself  with  all  kinds  of  astronomical 
phenomena,  and  Gomperz  has  made  him  appear  as  depos- 
ing in  principle  the  geocentric  hypothesis  and  in  general 
anticipating  modern  cosmology.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the 
historical  evidence  at  our  disposal  does  not  warrant  such 
an  extravagant  picture  and  that,  so  far  as  the  evidence 

[269:1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

does  go,  it  suggests  an  astronomy  of  retrograde  rather  than 
brilliant  character. 

The  work  of  the  Coan  medical  School  constitutes  one  of 
the  chief  glories  of  Greek  science,  but  again  reliable  infor- 
mation regarding  it  is  scanty.  According  to  tradition,  it 
came  into  great  prominence  towards  the  close  of  the  fifth 
century  b.c.  under  the  influence  of  Hippocrates.  Plato 
speaks  of  him  as  a  great  physician  and  teacher  of  medicine, 
and  the  tone  of  Plato's  remarks  agrees  with  the  tradition 
that  Hippocrates  was  the  outstanding  figure  in  medicine 
at  the  time.  His  prestige  was  such  that  the  medical  treat- 
ises produced  by  members  of  the  School  were  attributed 
to  him;  and  these  now  form  what  is  known  as  the  Hip- 
pocratic  Corpus.  This  is  a  collection  of  about  seventy 
separate  works  on  a  wide  variety  of  medical  topics;  and 
it  shows  unmistakable  evidences  of  having  been  produced 
over  a  considerable  length  of  time  by  authors  with  highly 
diversified  points  of  view.  Most  of  it  is  probably  to  be 
dated  later  than  the  lifetime  of  Hippocrates,  but  there  are 
several  treatises  which  may  be  referred  on  internal  indica- 
tions to  the  period  when  he  was  active,  and  it  seems  likely 
that  some  of  these  (though  we  cannot  say  which)  were  by 
his  own  hand.  The  main  tendency  of  the  best  works  of  this 
collection  was  in  the  direction  of  freeing  medicine  from 
philosophy  and  religious  superstition;  and  Celsus  asserts 
that  this  separation  was  the  contribution  of  Hippocrates 
himself.  Such  a  view  is  not  controverted  by  Plato's  state- 
ment that  according  to  Hippocrates  it  is  impossible  to 
understand  the  body  without  a  comprehension  of  its  whole 
nature;  for  Plato  proceeds  to  say  that  what  Hippocrates 
meant  by  the  whole  nature  of  anything  was  its  natural 
powers  and  organization.  The  point  is  made  clearer  in 
Chapter  xx  of  the  Hippocratic  treatise  On  Ancient  Medi- 

C  270  ] 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

cine,  where  we  read  that  a  physician  must  have  a  knowl- 
edge of  nature  but  that  the  only  way  to  gain  such  knowl- 
edge is  by  a  complete  investigation  of  the  body.  Now 
such  a  procedure  is  what  we  mean  by  the  inductive  method, 
and  we  can  see  this  method  actually  employed  in  the  rec- 
ord of  cases  which  have  been  preserved  as  part  of  the 
Corpus.  These  reveal  a  patient  observation  of  details,  an 
attempt  to  distinguish  characteristic  from  accidental 
symptoms,  and  a  generalization  of  the  characteristic 
features.  It  is  true  that  any  system  of  medical  treatment 
in  its  largest  aspect  seems  to  presuppose  some  theory  of 
causation,  and  such  theory,  based  ultimately  on  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  four  elements  (earth,  air,  fire  and  water) 
in  the  body,  is  not  lacking  in  the  Hippocratic  library.  But 
in  the  best  works  of  the  series  it  amounts  to  no  more  than 
a  working  hypothesis,  which  in  no  way  interferes  with  fur- 
ther investigation.  Hence  we  may  conclude  that  the  tes- 
timony of  Plato,  the  general  statements  of  method  in  the 
best  works  of  the  Corpus  itself,  and  the  actual  results  of 
that  method  as  found  in  the  same  works  combine  to  indi- 
cate that  the  Coan  physicians  at  this  period  had  adopted 
the  inductive  method  and  by  so  doing  raised  medicine  into 
the  position  of  an  independent  natural  science. 

It  is  clear  that  some  of  the  Pythagoreans  of  Plato's 
time  still  preserved  the  scientific  traditions  of  their  Order 
and  were  themselves  engaged  in  original  investigations; 
but  all  Pythagorean  science  was  bound  up  with  philosophy 
to  such  an  extent  that  it  is  practically  impossible  to  deter- 
mine where  the  one  leaves  off  and  the  other  begins.  The 
attitude  of  the  Order  is  well  illustrated  in  the  following 
sentence  of  Archytas,  a  contemporary  of  Plato:  "Those 
who  deal  with  mathematical  subjects  have,  I  think,  shown 
an  excellent  understanding  of  them,  and  it  is  not  at  all 

C  27i  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

surprising  that  they  have  a  proper  conception  of  the  nature 
of  individual  things ;  because,  having  shown  an  excellent 
understanding  of  the  nature  of  the  whole,  they  were  bound 
to  have  an  insight  into  the  nature  of  the  parts."  Here 
knowledge  of  the  universe  is  virtually  regarded  as  a  prior 
condition  of  the  knowledge  of  individual  objects!  It  goes 
without  saying  that  such  a  program  could  not  be  carried 
out  in  practice,  but  the  statement  illustrates  the  basic  con- 
fusion that  reigned  in  Pythagorean  circles.  The  wonder 
is  that  members  of  the  Order  ever  made  any  contributions 
to  science  at  all;  but  they  not  only  did  that,  they  also 
seem  to  have  constituted  a  continuous  influence  for  inves- 
tigation as  long  as  the  Order  lasted.  We  shall  need  to 
notice  in  particular  the  work  of  two  individuals,  who  were 
active  before  Plato  founded  the  Academy,  Philolaus  and 
Archytas. 

On  the  basis  of  the  fragments  previously  accepted, 
Philolaus  does  not  appear  as  an  arithmetician  or  geom- 
eter (though  he  uses  numbers  in  a  cosmological  sense), 
and  we  have  no  other  evidence  that  he  was.  According  to 
later  writers,  however,  he  was  something  of  an  astronomer, 
and  he  is  credited  with  one  theory  that  was  undoubtedly 
of  importance.  This  was  the  notion  that  the  earth  was  not 
in  the  center  of  the  world,  that  place  being  occupied  by  a 
central  fire  which  is  not  the  sun  and  which  is  invisible 
to  us  on  account  of  our  position.  Round  this  nuclear  fire 
revolve  ten  bodies,  an  antichthon  or  counter-earth,  the 
earth,  moon,  sun,  etc.  The  idea  that  the  earth  might  not  be 
in  the  center  of  the  world  and  that  it  might  be  a  planet  was 
entirely  novel  in  Greek  astronomical  doctrine,  and  though 
the  particular  theory  of  Philolaus  did  not  prove  correct, 
yet  it  was  bound  to  suggest  the  possibility  of  explanations 
which  would  "save"  more  phenomena  than  the  geocentric 

C  272  ] 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

hypothesis  did.  From  still  a  different  source  we  know  that 
Philolaus  was  the  originator  of  certain  medical  doctrines, 
but  these  are  not  important  enough  to  detain  us. 

Archytas  of  Taras  or  Tarentum  was  a  friend  of  Plato 
and  a  man  of  many  accomplishments.  He  is  said  to  have 
developed  mechanics  on  mathematical  lines,  and  he  was 
a  geometer  of  considerable  ability.  He  solved  the  prob- 
lem of  finding  two  mean  proportionals  in  continued  pro- 
portion, and  thus  also  the  problem  of  doubling  the  cube 
(see  above  under  Hippocrates  of  Chios).  He  also  wrote 
on  music,  defining  the  numerical  ratios  between  the  notes 
of  the  tetrachord;  but  we  do  not  know  how  much  of  his 
work  on  this  subject  was  original  and  how  much  repre- 
sented the  traditional  knowledge  of  the  Order.  Finally  in 
one  of  his  fragments  we  have  the  first  indication  that 
geometry,  arithmetic,  astronomy,  and  music  were  con- 
ceived as  "sister"  mathematical  sciences,  an  arrangement 
which  probably  influenced  Plato  in  drawing  up  his  pro- 
gram of  studies  for  the  higher  education  of  the  Guardians 
in  Book  VII  of  the  Republic. 

Theodorus  of  Cyrene  was  a  contemporary  of  Socrates 
and  a  follower  of  Protagoras.  He  is  also  mentioned  as  a 
Pythagorean,  but  that  probably  means  no  more  than  that 
he  had  learned  some  Pythagorean  science.  Plato's  dia- 
logue, the  Theaetetus,  which  is  our  only  source  of  infor- 
mation, suggests  that  Theodorus  was  learned  in  geometry, 
astronomy,  arithmetic,  and  music,  the  same  quadrivium 
as  was  mentioned  by  Archytas.  We  learn  also  that  Theo- 
dorus proved  the  incommensurability  of  1/3,  V  5  . . .  V  \"] 
with  1,  which  was  important  in  that  it  rendered  the 
Pythagorean  theory  of  proportion  (which  applied  to 
commensurables  only)  inadequate. 

Plato  was  evidently  conversant  with  the  sciences  of  his 

C  273  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

day,  and  his  knowledge  of  their  subject-matter  was  at 
least  up  to  date;  but  he  was  probably  not  an  original 
investigator.  He  seems  to  come  nearest  being  that  in  the 
field  of  psychology,  but  even  here  his  interest  appears  to 
have  been  at  bottom  metaphysical.  His  great  contribution 
to  science  was  a  theory  of  it. 

Plato  was  faced  with  a  number  of  separate  disciplines 
or  departments  of  knowledge,  loosely  called  arts  and  sci- 
ences, such  as  medicine,  music,  carpentering,  arithmetic, 
geometry,  and  astronomy.  His  problem  in  the  first  instance 
was:  "What  makes  any  one  of  these  a  science  and  thus 
distinguishes  it  from  such  activities  as  gymnastic  exercise 
or  such  literary  creations  as  poetry?  The  first  and  most 
obvious  answer  is  that  a  science  is  interested  in  knowledge, 
while  gymnastic  and  poetry  are  directed  toward  the  pro- 
duction of  some  practical  result.  This  distinction  will 
immediately  rule  out  of  consideration  all  constructions  of 
fancy  and  all  mere  bodily  activities.  But  here  the  problem 
enters  a  second  stage,  because  certain  disciplines,  like 
music  and  medicine,  seem  to  combine  an  interest  in  knowl- 
edge with  the  production  of  practical  results,  and  even 
arithmetic  and  geometry  have  practical  aspects  in  calcu- 
lation and  surveying.  Now  this  means  that  there  are  really 
two  modes  of  knowledge;  pure  knowledge,  whose  end  is 
fulfilled  within  itself,  and  impure  or  practical  knowledge, 
whose  end  lies  in  some  effect  beyond  itself.  In  the  latter, 
the  knowledge  is  important  only  in  producing  the  effect, 
and  it  is  therefore  permissible  to  neglect  insignificant 
fractions  in  surveying  and  architecture,  to  tune  the  strings 
of  the  lyre  by  ear,  and  in  general  to  admit  slight  inaccura- 
cies which  do  not  seriously  affect  the  results.  But  such  pro- 
cedure is  patently  improper  in  pure  knowledge,  and  there- 
fore the  second  criterion  of  science  is  exactness.  By  this 

C  274  1 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

criterion  we  can  distinguish  between  science  and  the  scien- 
tific aspect  of  art,  between  the  science  of  arithmetic  and 
the  art  of  calculation  in  any  business,  between  the  science 
of  harmonics  and  the  art  of  music.  But  here  the  problem 
enters  a  third  phase,  for  even  among  the  sciences  there 
seem  to  be  different  degrees  of  exactness;  for  example, 
arithmetic  or  the  pure  science  of  numbers  is  more  exact 
than  medicine.  The  reason  for  this,  Plato  thinks,  lies  in 
the  fact  that  medicine  and  similar  sciences  are  too  inti- 
mately concerned  with  concrete  objects  of  sense,  which 
are  constantly  changing,  while  arithmetic  and  geometry 
deal  with  ideas  of  the  understanding,  whose  form  is  set 
eternally  by  their  definition.  Hence  a  science  is  exact  to 
the  degree  in  Which  it  abstracts  from  sensible  objects, 
and  abstractness  is  the  third  criterion  of  science.  By  this 
criterion  we  can  distinguish  the  mathematical  sciences 
from  the  others,  and  Plato  even  suggests  the  development 
of  a  mathematical  or  abstract  astronomy  and  harmonics. 
Thus  his  procedure  brings  him  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
sciences  par  excellence  are  arithmetic,  plane  and  solid 
geometry,  astronomy,  and  harmonics. 

These  sciences  then  represent  systematic  attempts  to 
gain  pure,  accurate,  abstract  knowledge.  But  the  question 
now  arises:  Can  the  sciences  reach  this  goal  which  they 
have  proposed  for  themselves'?  Plato  answers  that  they 
cannot,  and  the  fundamental  reason  why  they  cannot  is 
that  they  are  separate  and  partial  translations  of  a  reality 
that  must  be  unitary.  Since  each  of  them  considers  only 
a  part  or  aspect  of  reality,  it  must  start  with  a  proposition 
which  may  be  true  for  it  and  yet  may  not  apply  in  the 
same  sense  to  other  parts.  Such  a  proposition  will  be  an 
hypothesis,  assumed  as  the  most  likely  beginning;  and  the 
procedure  of  a  science,  no  matter  how  inductive  it  seems, 

C  275  ] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

will  really  be  the  deduction  of  consequences  from  an  un- 
criticized  hypothesis.  Now  this  procedure  must  finally  be 
established  either  by  the  inner  consistency  of  its  deduc- 
tions or  by  an  appeal  to  facts ;  in  the  former  case  you  have 
still  a  merely  "hypothetical"  chain  of  reasoning;  in  the 
latter,  you  are  still  bound  down  to  matters  of  sense.  Hence 
the  sciences  cannot  fulfil  the  purpose  which  has  created 
them;  and  that  purpose  can  be  achieved  only  "when  all 
these  studies  reach  the  point  of  inter-communion  and  con- 
nection with  one  another,  and  come  to  be  considered  in 
their  mutual  affinities,"  when  the  various  hypotheses  can 
be  compared  and  done  away  with  as  hypotheses,  when  the 
light  of  reason  "without  any  assistance  of  sense"  leads 
the  way  to  one  all-embracing,  unhypothetical  principle. 
Then  and  not  till  then  will  the  sciences  become  science. 
Thus  did  Plato  distinguish  for  the  first  time  between  sci- 
ence and  the  sciences.  But  he  held  that  the  only  approach 
to  science  lay  through  the  sciences,  because  science  must  be 
the  completion  of  the  work  of  the  sciences.  Hence  science 
is  the  highest  and  best  philosophy;  and  the  highest  phi- 
losophy, or  dialectic,  as  it  is  called  from  its  method,  is 
science — a  view  which  is  the  more  remarkable  when  we 
remember  that  Plato's  master  had  denied  the  philosophical 
utility  of  science. 

We  cannot  here  follow  in  detail  the  further  course  of 
Greek  science.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  scientific  investiga- 
tion continued  to  flourish.  The  great  contributions  made 
by  Aristotle,  Euclid,  Archimedes,  Ptolemy  and  Galen,  for 
example,  were  conditioned  by  the  work  of  a  host  of  less 
famous  inquirers  and  observers  who  carried  on  the  living 
tradition. 

It  should  be  evident  to  anyone  who  has  perused  the 
foregoing  resume  that  there  was  an  active  impulse  for 

C  276] 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

scientific  investigation  from  the  very  beginning  of  what 
we  call  Greek  philosophy,  and  that  even  in  the  presocratic 
period  a  considerable  body  of  natural  and  mathematical 
knowledge  was  amassed.  We  must  now  attempt  to  deter- 
mine what  the  relation  was  between  that  knowledge  and 
philosophical  speculation.  Now  of  the  important  thinkers 
who  are  usually  classed  as  cosmologists  only  Xenophanes 
and  Heraclitus  do  not  appear  as  scientists  in  the  strict 
sense.  That  means  at  least  that  nearly  all  of  these  thinkers 
combined  in  their  activity  an  attempt  to  know  certain 
parts  of  nature  with  an  attempt  to  explain  nature  as  a 
whole.  But  a  logical  analysis  of  the  systems  of  these  same 
thinkers  has  already  disclosed  the  fact  that  their  method 
consisted  in  building  up  a  body  of  theory  on  a  basis  of 
observed  phenomena.  It  now  becomes  evident  that  this 
basis  of  observed  facts  was  precisely  the  result  of  their 
attempt  to  know  certain  parts  of  nature,  or,  in  other 
words,  scientific  knowledge.  Hence  we  are  justified  in 
holding  that  cosmology  as  a  whole  was  not  a  mere  exercise 
of  imagination  under  the  impulsion  of  vain  curiosity,  but 
rather  a  systematic  attempt  to  build  up  a  knowledge  of  the 
world  on  the  solid  foundation  of  scientific  investigation. 
There  is  current,  however,  a  belief  that  the  explanation 
of  nature  as  a  whole  influenced  the  explanation  of  the 
parts  of  nature,  or  to  put  the  notion  in  its  usual  form, 
that  Greek  philosophy  interfered  with  Greek  science.  For 
example,  Mr.  Charles  Singer,  writing  on  "Greek  Biology 
and  Its  Relation  to  the  Rise  of  Modern  Biology"  {Studies 
in  the  History  and  Method  of  Science,  II,  p.  4),  has  said: 
"Whether  we  look  to  such  early  traces  of  the  scientific 
spirit  as  that  of  the  sixth  century  b.c,  when  Pythagoras 
was  contriving  his  first  formulated  conceptions  of  the 
relations  of  number  to  form,  or  whether  we  consider  the 

C  277  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

last  vitally  original  works  of  Greek  science  in  the  second 
century  of  the  Christian  era,  when  Galen  and  Ptolemy 
were  giving  forth  those  ideas  on  the  structure  of  man  and 
of  the  world  that  were  to  dominate  western  thought  for 
a  millennium  and  a  half,  from  end  to  end  Greek  science 
constantly  betrays  its  descent  from  Greek  philosophy." 

Now  it  seems  to  me  that  this  is  put  the  wrong  way,  for 
the  reason  that  for  the  most  part  in  the  presocratic  period 
philosophy  and  science  were  the  same  thing.  This  was 
before  the  time  when  Plato  separated  science  from  the 
sciences,  and  all  investigation  of  nature  was  still  one.  If, 
therefore,  Mr.  Singer  means  that  a  general  prior  interpre- 
tation of  the  world  colored  the  results  of  scientific  inves- 
tigation, I  would  reply  that  where  the  two  are  found 
together,  the  balance  of  the  evidence  is  against  his  conten- 
tion, and  that  there  are  a  good  many  cases  of  scientific 
investigation  without  any  general  interpretation.  There 
is  no  evidence,  for  example,  that  Pythagoras'  general 
views  biased  his  statement  of  the  harmonic  ratios,  or  that 
Anaximander's  study  of  animals  was  interfered  with  by 
his  "philosophy,"  or  that  the  quadratrix  of  Hippias  was 
the  product  of  his  sophistry.  And  again  there  were  scien- 
tists, like  Oenopides,  Meton,  Hippocrates  of  Chios,  and 
Theodorus,  who  do  not  appear  to  have  had  any  "phi- 
losophy" at  all. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  Mr.  Singer  means  that  it  was 
difficult  for  Greek  investigators  to  divorce  investigation 
of  phenomena  from  interpretation  of  phenomena,  I  should 
agree  with  him  but  at  the  same  time  point  out  that  our 
modern  scientists  are  confronted  with  the  same  difficulty. 
The  notion  that  science  consists  in  collecting  purely  objec- 
tive facts  is  a  half-truth  that  has  done  much  harm  in  the 
modern  world.  To  be  sure,  the  first  duty  of  a  scientist  is 

[278: 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

to  observe ;  but  an  observation  is  always  a  sensation  that 
has  been  cognized,  that  is,  absorbed  and  related  by  a 
consciousness.  A  sensation  becomes  a  fact  only  after  it 
has  been  thus  interpreted  and  expressed  in  terms  of 
thought.  Hence  even  a  scientist  can  only  interpret  what 
his  senses  convey  to  him,  and  in  this  particular  respect 
modern  investigators  must  obey  the  same  psychological 
law  which  governed  the  labors  of  their  ancient  Greek 
predecessors. 

Moreover,  a  "fact"  of  science  is  not  merely  the  obser- 
vation of  an  individual  investigator ;  it  must  be  capable 
of  verification  by  other  investigators,  for  in  one  aspect 
science  is  the  agreement  of  scientists.  Hence  the  sensation 
of  one  must  be  interpreted  in  terms  which  can  be  used 
and  understood  by  all,  and  terms  into  which  it  is  trans- 
lated thus  become  of  the  utmost  importance.  Now  with- 
out doubt  the  first  impulse  to  science,  as  we  have  already 
seen,  was  an  intellectual  one,  and  it  tended  to  avoid 
emotion  as  well  as  fancy;  but  the  earliest  investigators 
of  Greece  depended  to  a  large  extent  on  bare  feelings 
interpreted  in  the  ordinary  way.  Anaximander  based  his 
whole  theory  on  the  sensations  of  hot  and  cold,  and  appar- 
ently thought  of  these  as  due  to  hot  and  cold  principles, 
which  were  as  separate  and  distinct  from  each  other  as 
the  sensations  of  them.  Anaximenes  went  further  from 
the  sensation  and  intellectualized  the  theory  by  softening 
the  basic  opposition  between  the  two  principles.  Pytha- 
goras carried  on  the  process  of  intellectual izing  by  the 
idea  of  a  correlation  or  harmony  between  opposites.  Hera- 
clitus  went  still  further  in  the  same  direction  when  he 
asserted  that  the  opposites  of  sensation  were  actually,  that 
is  for  the  intellect,  the  same.  And  finally  Parmenides  ruled 
sensations  out  of  court  entirely.  Thus  the  progress  of  early 

C  279  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

Greek  science  up  to  this  point  had  been  steadily  away  from 
bare  sensation  toward  intellectual  interpretation.  The 
subsequent  speculation  of  the  first  period  represented 
various  theoretical  attempts  to  mediate  between  the  evi- 
dence of  the  senses  and  the  intellect;  but  the  scientific 
impulse,  without  waiting  for  philosophy  to  solve  this  prob- 
lem, continued  to  investigate  phenomena  as  best  it  could. 
In  vain  did  the  Sophists  insist  on  the  variability  and  the 
fallibilty  of  the  senses;  too  many  astronomers  saw  the 
same  movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  too  many  physi- 
cians felt  the  same  indications  of  fever,  to  convince  them 
that  anything  was  wrong  except  their  furthest  conclu- 
sions. It  was  then  that  Socrates  from  the  philosophical 
side  showed  the  fundamental  identity  in  conceptions,  and 
later  Plato  and  Aristotle  did  a  greater  service  by  relating 
sensation  to  conception.  It  may  be  said  that  the  science 
of  Plato's  day,  as  found  for  example  in  the  best  Coan 
medical  treatises,  was  asserting  the  fundamental  correct- 
ness of  ordinary  sensation  and  distrusting  the  intellectual 
theories  read  into  its  data,  while  contemporary  philosophy, 
as  found  in  the  works  of  Plato  himself,  was  distrusting 
the  evidence  of  the  senses  and  asserting  the  fundamental 
truthfulness  of  the  pure  intellect.  In  Aristotle  sensation 
and  pure  thought,  science  and  philosophy  are  distinguished 
and  related  and  harmonized. 

In  the  course  of  this  contest  between  sensation  and 
thought,  Greek  science  steadily  progressed,  not  even  halted 
by  the  onslaughts  of  Parmenides  and  Gorgias;  but  it 
seemed  to  learn  two  lessons  which  proved  of  inestimable 
value  to  it.  The  first  was  that  the  sensory  element  must 
be  reduced  below  the  limit  of  possible  disagreement  to  an 
obvious  minimum;  and  the  second,  which  is  complemen- 
tary to  the  first,  was  that  interpretations  of  sensuous  data 

C  2803 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

must  be  made  but  made  in  terms  of  the  intellect  rather 
than  of  the  bare  feelings.  Thus  when  Empedocles  describes 
rain  as  "everywhere  dark  and  cold,"  he  is  formulating  a 
certain  sense  experience  of  his  own,  which  cannot  be  veri- 
fied by  other  investigators,  and  he  is  interpreting  this 
experience  in  terms  of  his  own  feelings.  Most  modern 
science  rests  ultimately  on  sensations  of  sight,  because 
these  seem  to  be  least  subject  to  error  and  variation,  and 
Empedocles'  description  of  rain  would  not  now  be  con- 
sidered scientific.  It  may  be  said  that  Greek  science  ordi- 
narily admitted  a  larger  sensory  element  than  would  now 
be  deemed  proper,  and  it  therefore  seems  more  subjective 
than  modern  science;  but  it  should  also  be  said  that  by 
Plato's  time  at  least,  Greek  scientists  had  learned  the 
fallibility  of  the  senses  and  the  necessity  of  making  intel- 
lectual interpretations  of  their  data. 

But  this  method  by  itself  tended  to  fall  into  a  difficulty 
almost  as  great  as  the  free  use  of  the  senses,  for  the 
attempt  to  generalize  on  a  minimum  of  sense  data  fre- 
quently meant  generalization  on  insufficient  evidence,  and 
thus  led  to  excess  of  theory.  Some  device  had  to  be  found 
to  take  the  place  of  the  senses  and  determine  accurately 
the  characteristics  of  phenomena.  This  could  be  done  only 
by  the  invention  of  objective  standards,  and  in  this  field 
probably  Greek  science  manifests  its  greatest  weakness  as 
compared  with  the  modern  product.  The  Greeks  appear 
to  have  had  merely  rough  standards  of  length,  weight,  and 
bulk;  we  have  not  only  refined  these  to  an  almost  incon- 
ceivable degree,  but  have  also  invented  a  large  number  of 
others,  such  as  thermometers,  pressure  gauges,  compasses, 
clocks,  and  the  like.  If  Anaximander  had  had  a  ther- 
mometer, he  would  have  perceived  that  heat  and  cold  are 
not  separate  things.  Again,  we  would  not  accept  the  asser- 

[281 1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

tion  of  Anaximenes  that  water  is  condensed  air,  because 
we  understand  condensation  as  a  general  process  definable 
in  particular  substances  only  by  some  objective  standard 
of  mechanical  pressure,  and  when  such  pressure  is  applied 
to  air,  it  does  not  yield  water  but  compressed  air,  or  with 
a  lowering  of  temperature,  liquid  air;  the  fact  to  which 
Anaximenes  was  probably  referring  would  now  be  called 
precipitation.  Thus  the  invention  of  these  objective  stand- 
ards has  not  only  greatly  reduced  our  dependence  on  our 
senses,  but  it  has  also  made  possible  accurate  investigation 
of  many  phenomena  which  could  not  have  been  investi- 
gated at  all  by  the  unaided  senses;  and  it  has  enabled  us 
to  correct  our  intellectual  interpretations  of  sensory  data. 
We  have,  for  example,  replaced  the  notions  of  hot  and 
cold  with  the  more  general  conception  of  temperature ;  on 
the  other  hand,  we  have  distinguished  meteorological 
from  astronomical  phenomena,  which  the  Greeks  grouped 
together  as  "aloft."  In  countless  ways  our  scientists  are 
continually  extending  and  checking  up  their  conceptions 
through  the  employment  of  objective  standards  in  ex- 
periment. It  is  perhaps  worthwhile,  however,  to  notice 
that  by  using  these  standards  of  measurement,  sci- 
entists do  but  compare  new  phenomena  with  old  ones 
whose  interpretation  has  been  agreed  upon  beforehand. 
A  pressure  gauge  is  an  instrument  which  substitutes  visual 
for  tactile  sensations;  and  we  have  agreed  to  regard  a 
certain  obvious  position  of  the  pointer  as  indicating  the 
pressure  which  we  have  agreed  to  interpret  as  a  pound.  It 
is  thus  impossible  for  us  to  escape  sensation  and  the  inter- 
pretation of  it;  but  the  use  of  these  objective  standards 
has  reduced  our  dependence  on  our  senses  and  harmon- 
ized our  interpretations  of  sense  data. 

The  patient  investigation  of  phenomena  according  to 

C  282  3 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  COSMOLOGY 

the  inductive  method,  which  was  begun  by  the  Greeks, 
first  brought  agreement  upon  many  ordinary  phenomena; 
then  new  phenomena  could  be  investigated  by  comparison 
with  those  upon  which  agreement  had  been  reached,  until 
the  principle  of  uniformity  and  regularity  was  carried 
into  a  vast  number  of  separate  fields.  And  now  when 
many  of  these  fields  have  been  shown  to  coalesce,  there  is, 
as  it  were,  a  great  network  of  agreed  interrelations  be- 
between  phenomena,  into  which  a  newly  observed  phe- 
nomenon must  be  fitted.  Psychologically  this  means  that 
there  now  exist  many  established  categories  of  intellectual 
interpretation,  which  can  be  used  by  individual  investiga- 
tors and  which  seem  to  be  objective  to  each  of  them  simply 
because  he  has  been  taught  to  regard  them  as  established. 
The  existence  of  these  agreed  categories  limits  the  inter- 
pretation of  new  phenomena,  and  hence  a  modern  scien- 
tist has  less  chance  than  an  ancient  to  apply  peculiar 
general  notions  of  his  own  in  interpreting  his  sensory  data. 
In  this  sense  also,  our  science  appears  to  be  more  objective 
than  that  of  the  Greeks. 


CHAPTER    III 

THE  PRACTICAL  AND  ETHICAL  IMPLICATIONS 
OF  EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

If  it  is  true,  as  I  have  held,  that  science,  inseparable  from 
the  sciences,  was  included  in  philosophy  in  the  first  period, 
it  does  not  follow  that  philosophy  was  nothing  but  sci- 
ence. Indeed  it  appears  that  philosophy  was  more  than 
science  from  a  very  early  point  in  its  development.  We 
may  therefore  turn  our  attention  to  some  manifestations 
of  the  philosophic  spirit,  which  do  not  fall  within  the  pur- 
view of  science. 

The  first  of  these  manifestations  occurs  in  Pythagoras 
though  it  is  possible  that  if  our  extant  evidence  for  the 
Milesians  was  more  complete,  we  would  find  the  same 
spirit  among  them  also.  There  are  two  general  facts  con- 
cerning the  Pythagoreans,  that  seem  to  be  attested  beyond 
question :  the  first  is  that  they  formed  and  maintained  an 
association  for  scientific  investigation;  the  second  is  that 
the  same  association  stood  for  a  certain  way  of  living  and 
a  certain  attitude  toward  life.  The  scientific  activity  was 
the  manifestation  of  a  desire  to  know,  while  the  attitude 
toward  life  was  the  expression  of  a  scheme  of  values.  The 
second  point  apart  from  the  first  is  not  significant  for  our 
particular  purposes,  as  it  simply  means  that  the  Pythago- 
rean Order  was  an  agency  for  moral  and  religious  propa- 
ganda. For  the  history  of  philosophy  we  are  interested  in 

r.  284  3 


PRACTICAL  AND  ETHICAL  IMPLICATIONS 

this  practical  aspect  of  Pythagorean  doctrine,  only  if  it 
was  connected  in  some  way  with  the  theoretical. 

Now  the  fact  that  certain  members,  who  called  them- 
selves Pythagorists,  continued  to  emphasize  the  primitive 
taboos  and  to  neglect  scientific  investigation  would  indi- 
cate that,  in  their  case  at  least,  the  scheme  of  values  did 
not  give  prominence  to  a  desire  to  know.  Furthermore, 
those  members  who  did  practise  scientific  inquiry  were  led 
to  discoveries,  that  is,  positive  knowledge,  which  might 
seem  to  have  little  or  no  practical  value ;  for  example,  it 
is  difficult  to  see  how  life  could  be  evaluated  in  terms  of  a 
law  of  harmonic  intervals  or  a  theory  of  numbers.  And 
this  seems  to  suggest  that  it  was  not  the  positive  results, 
but  the  activity  of  learning  that  was  valued. 

But  such  an  interpretation  appears  inadequate  to  ac- 
count for  the  sustained  vitality  of  the  Pythagorean 
inquiry,  which  must  have  had  some  unusually  strong 
motivation;  and  it  overlooks  the  mystical  and  religious 
significance  with  which  the  Pythagoreans  clothed  their 
scientific  and  mathematical  concepts.  The  only  explana- 
tion of  all  these  facts  would  seem  to  be  that  a  section  of 
the  Order  at  least  held  that  scientific  inquiry  was  valuable, 
and  if  we  may  trust  the  Parable  of  the  Three  Lives,  the 
most  valuable  kind  of  life,  because  it  brought  the  human 
agent  directly  into  contact  with  the  divine  principles 
which  governed  the  world.  In  the  eyes  of  these  Pythago- 
reans, therefore,  scientific  laws  and  even  mathematical 
formulae  did  have  a  value,  as  the  manifestation  of  a 
divine  operation,  appreciation  of  which  meant  purifica- 
tion and  happiness;  and  the  value  of  the  activity  of 
inquiry  was  indistinguishable  from  the  value  of  its  results. 

With  Xenophanes  we  meet  quite  a  different  attitude. 
He   was  primarily  concerned   with   the   morals  of   his 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

countrymen,  and  he  believed  that  the  current  attitude 
toward  life  was  wrong.  His  criticisms  are  directed  against 
delight  in  mere  bodily  strength,  such  as  is  honored  at  the 
great  games,  and  the  preference  given  to  athletic  prowess 
over  artistic  skill  (cro<f>ir)) ;  against  the  dainty  and  effete 
styles  affected  in  imitation  of  the  Lydians  (we  may  pre- 
sume that  he  praised  natural  simplicity  and  moderation)  ; 
against  drunkenness  and  the  habit  of  drinking  wine  with- 
out the  customary  admixture  of  water;  against  the  songs 
about  civil  strife  (Alceus)  and  disgraceful  actions  of  the 
gods  (Homer  and  Hesiod).  Now  in  the  extant  fragments 
Xenophanes  does  not  explicitly  say  that  these  degrading 
practices  are  due  to  a  false  idea  of  the  gods,  but  his  expres- 
sions certainly  suggest  that  he  believed  this  to  be  the  case. 
Men  first  picture  gods  in  their  own  image ;  then  they  at- 
tribute to  them  all  their  own  foibles  and  desires,  together 
with  supernatural  power  or  absence  of  social  restraint; 
and  finally  they  worship  them  and  use  them  as  patterns 
of  conduct.  Such  are  at  least  the  implications  of  Xeno- 
phanes; and  we  must  accordingly  suppose  that  when  he 
introduces  a  new  idea  of  divinity,  he  intends  that  this  shall 
lead  to  a  different  morality.  Now  the  idea  of  divinity 
which  he  proposes  is  just  the  idea  which  existed  in  Ionian 
science :  god  is  the  material  world  as  a  whole.  Xenophanes 
therefore  uses  science  or  positive  knowledge  to  evaluate 
life.  And  he  seems  to  know  what  he  is  doing,  for  in  one 
of  his  fragments  he  says  that  "the  gods  have  not  discov- 
ered to  mortals  all  things  from  the  beginning,  but  by 
searching  they  find  in  time  what  is  better."  Here  "better" 
obviously  means  "better  to  believe,"  and  probably  also 
"better  to  do."  In  other  words  Xenophanes  sees  that  the 
desire  to  know  has  issued  in  knowledge,  by  the  light  of 
which  it  is  possible  to  form  a  truer  scheme  of  practical 

C2863 


PRACTICAL  AND  ETHICAL  IMPLICATIONS 

values.  But  personally  he  was  more  interested  in  those 
practical  values  than  in  knowledge,  about  which  he  was 
sceptical.  His  attitude  might  be  described  by  a  paraphrase 
as  follows:  It  is  impossible  to  gain  certain  knowledge 
about  the  gods;  but  we  can  construct  adequate  surmises 
on  the  basis  of  what  we  do  know  of  the  world ;  and  at  least 
we  now  know  enough  of  the  world  to  be  sure  that  the  gods 
are  not  such  as  the  poets  have  pictured  them ;  therefore  we 
ought  not  to  act  as  if  such  gods  existed. 

"Understanding,"  said  Heraclitus,  "is  the  greatest 
virtue,  and  wisdom  is  to  speak  true  things  and  act  accord- 
ing to  the  principle  of  the  world  (or  nature),  by  paying 
heed  to  this."  Here  and  in  other  fragments  the  Ephesian 
philosopher  unequivocally  connects  the  desire  to  know 
with  ethical  values.  His  position  is  that  human  nature  is 
still  nature,  and  if  a  principle  operates  in  the  latter,  the 
same  principle  will  be  found  and  is  found  in  the  former, 
for  the  world  is  "the  same  for  all."  And  now  comes  the 
presupposition  that  underlies  all  his  thinking:  what  is 
right  is  what  is  natural,  and  what  is  natural  is  what  is 
logically  consistent  with  our  knowledge  of  the  workings  of 
nature.  For  example,  Homer  was  wrong  in  praying  for  the 
abolition  of  strife,  because  strife  is  the  natural  state  of  the 
world.  Some  men  are  free  and  others  are  slaves,  because 
strife  has  made  them  so,  and  strife  is  justice.  Drunkenness 
is  bad  because  it  produces  an  unnatural  condition  of  the 
soul.  Hence  for  Heraclitus  values  are  determined  by  the 
natural  order  of  things,  and  it  is  only  by  discovering  that 
order,  which  so  frequently  does  not  appear  on  the  surface, 
that  we  can  evaluate.  Patently  a  difficulty  lurks  in  this 
doctrine,  for  if  the  world  is  the  same  for  all  and  is  regu- 
lated by  a  natural  principle,  how  does  it  come  that  a  part 
of  it,  human  nature,  can  violate  the  order*?  And  if  answer 

C287] 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

is  made  that  it  is  natural  for  them  to  violate  the  order,  for 
justice  is  the  same  as  injustice  and  good  and  bad  are  really 
one,  then  we  must  ask  why  the  philosopher  presumes  to 
praise  and  blame,  or  how  any  system  of  values  is  possible. 
Such  a  question,  however,  was  beyond  the  imagination  of 
Heraclitus.  For  him  understanding  is  the  best  activity 
of  men,  because  only  by  its  means  can  men  assign  proper 
values;  and  those  values  are  to  be  fixed  in  terms  of  the 
positive  knowledge  to  which  understanding  leads. 

If  our  previous  interpretation  of  Empedocles  was  cor- 
rect, we  must  hold  that  the  cosmological  Love  was  a 
divinity,  and  that  the  ethical  and  religious  exhortations 
contained  in  the  Purifications  were  based  on  the  supposi- 
tion that  correct  actions  can  be  only  those  which  accord 
with  the  forces  which  regulate  the  world.  For  example, 
the  killing  of  animals  for  sacrifice  or  for  food  is  wrong 
because  it  puts  into  operation  the  law  of  Strife,  and  life 
depends  on  the  operation  of  Love.  It  is  therefore  necessary 
to  understand  the  working  of  these  cosmological  forces  in 
order  to  act  in  agreement  with  them;  and  hence  "the  man 
who  has  gained  the  riches  of  divine  wisdom  is  happy, 
while  he  is  wretched  whose  opinion  of  the  gods  is  dim." 
Thus  from  the  purely  ethical  point  of  view,  knowledge 
is  the  road  to  happiness ;  and  the  same  holds  for  the  whole 
practical  life  of  man.  At  the  end  of  the  poem  on  Nature, 
Empedocles  predicts  that  knowledge  of  his  principles  will 
bring  practical  benefits  of  every  kind.  In  general,  there- 
fore, values  can  be  determined  only  in  terms  of  positive 
knowledge. 

The  fact  that  Anaxagoras  placed  Mind  in  supreme  con- 
trol of  the  world  would  of  itself  be  a  sufficient  indication 
that  he  valued  the  mind  in  human  beings  above  all  else,  if 
he  thought  of  values  at  all.  That  he  did  think  so  is  estab- 

C288] 


PRACTICAL  AND  ETHICAL  IMPLICATIONS 

lished  with  considerable  probability  by  the  references  in 
later  writers,  of  whom  Plato  and  Aristotle  are  the  chief 
witnesses.  But  if  we  use  all  the  testimony  at  our  disposal, 
the  utmost  that  can  be  legitimately  deduced  from  it  is 
that  Anaxagoras  ranked  the  theoretic  life  of  scientific  in- 
vestigation as  paramount  and  that  his  understanding  of 
the  nature  of  the  mind  might  be  utilized  for  practical  pur- 
poses, as  for  example  in  argumentation.  Further  than  that 
we  cannot  go. 

Although  the  Sophists  were  not  united  in  their  teach- 
ing, did  not  profess  similar  doctrines,  and  did  not  even 
start  from  the  same  point  of  view,  yet  their  profession 
was  the  same,  namely,  to  impart  goodness.  Such  a  phrase 
is  wellnigh  meaningless  to  us,  or,  if  it  has  a  meaning,  this 
is  a  wrong  one.  We  shall  understand  them  better  if  we 
think  of  them  as  exponents  of  individual  efficiency,  in  all 
phases  of  political  life  and  in  the  management  of  house- 
holds. They  preached  a  gospel  of  success  and  they  empha- 
sized accomplishment.  Such  a  doctrine  of  itself  suggests 
a  definite  evaluation  of  life,  according  to  which  the  only 
thing  that  counts  is  the  aggrandizement  of  the  individual 
under  the  conditions  of  a  politico-social  existence.  But  this 
position  was  not  ostensibly  antisocial,  for  it  took  for 
granted  the  common  life  of  a  city-state  as  the  necessary 
basis  and  requisite  which  made  individual  success  pos- 
sible. The  Sophists  therefore  staunchly  upheld  law,  tra- 
dition, and  convention.  Now  since  success  is  the  desid- 
eratum, the  only  knowledge  that  can  be  valuable  at  all  is 
a  knowledge  of  the  factors  which  spell  success ;  knowledge 
of  nature  (if  that  is  possible)  is  worthless.  But  further- 
more even  the  knowledge  that  is  useful  is  entirely  second- 
ary to  successful  accomplishment;  it  is  not  valuable 
per  se.  The  Sophists  illustrated  this  idea  in  their  own 

C289H 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

practice,  for  they  were  willing  to  teach  anything,  pro- 
vided they  would  prosper  on  it.  Hence  it  may  be  said  that 
the  Sophists  evaluated  life  in  terms  of  activities  and 
achievements  rather  than  knowledge ;  and  that  with  them 
the  desire  to  know  was  directed  not  toward  the  natural, 
but  the  social,  conditions  of  existence,  and  was  subor- 
dinated to  the  desire  to  succeed.  For  this  reason  also  they 
were  not  interested  in  a  pure  theory  of  values,  which  is 
ultimately  an  aspect  of  the  desire  for  knowledge. 

We  have  previously  found  reason  to  believe  that  Philo- 
laus  maintained  the  pure  religious  doctrine  of  the  Pytha- 
gorean Order,  holding  that  men's  souls  are  imprisoned  in 
their  bodies  for  a  punishment  and  that  release  is  gained 
by  a  knowledge  of  the  divine  Harmony  in  the  world.  This 
means  that  Philolaus,  like  his  Master,  put  the  highest 
value  upon  knowledge.  But  there  is  no  evidence  that  he 
followed  his  Master  in  setting  any  value  at  all  on  taboos 
and  primitive  religious  practices  of  that  kind;  and  the 
quality  of  his  thinking  makes  it  highly  improbable  that 
he  held  any  such  beliefs.  On  the  other  hand  he  did  advance 
certain  ethical  and  practical  views,  which  are  hardly  at- 
tributable to  Pythagoras  in  this  form.  Chief  among  such 
is  the  doctrine  that  there  is  a  numerical  faculty  or  capacity 
in  the  soul  which  harmonizes  perceptions,  makes  distinc- 
tions, and  can  be  made  effective  in  all  human  activities 
both  practical  and  theoretical.  It  is  naturally  akin  to  truth, 
and  hostile  to  falsehood  and  malice.  Philolaus  thus  seems 
to  suggest  that  if  by  study  and  philosophy  we  make  the 
divine  principle  of  numerical  harmony  operative  in  our 
souls,  we  shall  not  only  reap  a  reward  in  the  next  world, 
but  also  gain  certain  practical  benefits  in  this  life.  Hence 
not  only  was  the  search  for  knowledge  inherently 
valuable,  but  the  positive  knowledge  gained  in  the  search 

C  290  ] 


PRACTICAL  AND  ETHICAL  IMPLICATIONS 

also  brought  definite  values;  and  in  both  cases  knowl- 
edge was  considered  as  knowledge  of  nature  interpreted 
mathematically. 

The  final  ethical  import  of  cosmology,  Pythagoreanism 
excepted,  was  naturalistic  in  that  it  had  emphasized  con- 
formity to  the  physical  laws  of  the  world.  But  in  the  rise 
of  Humanism,  men  had  begun  to  see  that  there  was  a 
whole  set  of  social  and  political  circumstances  affecting 
their  lives  apparently  much  more  nearly  than  the  cosmo- 
logical  factors.  The  Sophists  had  been  quick  to  urge  the 
significance  of  these  social  conditions,  and  had  shown  the 
possibility  of  ordering  life  in  such  a  way  as  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  social  environment.  Passive  conformity  to 
natural  law  gave  way  to  active  manipulation  of  political 
laws,  and  men  gained  a  sense  of  freedom  in  living,  which 
was  quite  impossible  when  subjection  to  Nature  filled 
their  minds.  It  was  this  point  of  view  that  Socrates  car- 
ried into  philosophy  by  developing  the  idea  that  man's 
mind  was  a  free  agent  and  that  knowledge  made  a  differ- 
ence in  life;  and  his  search  for  Justice,  the  characteristic 
differentia  of  human  beings,  was  based  on  the  supposition 
that  the  goodness  of  man  was  not  the  same  as  the  good- 
ness of  a  pruning  hook  or  any  other  useful  instrument, 
simply  because  man  had  knowledge.  When  Socrates  talks 
of  goodness,  he  is  standing  on  the  same  ground  as  the 
Sophists;  when  he  talks  of  knowledge,  he  goes  with  the 
cosmologists;  but  the  juncture  of  the  two  ideas  is  his  own. 
The  goodness  was  a  quality  of  man  by  himself  and  not  as 
a  part  of  nature,  and  it  was  definable  in  strictly  human 
terms  rather  than  in  the  laws  of  water,  fire,  or  air;  such 
an  idea  did  not  occur  to  any  of  the  cosmologists,  with  a 
partial  exception  of  Anaxagoras.  Moreover,  the  knowl- 
edge was  a  knowledge  of  the  real  world,  both  inside  and 

C  29i  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

outside  human  nature;  and  such  a  knowledge  had  been 
repudiated  by  the  Sophists.  But  in  the  judgment  that 
goodness  is  knowledge,  both  terms  took  on  a  new  meaning, 
which  was  typically  Socratic.  The  goodness  that  could  be 
equated  with  knowledge  was  not  a  mere  imitative  dexter- 
ity in  certain  external  relations  of  the  person,  but  rather 
an  intellectual  quality  of  the  soul ;  and  the  knowledge  that 
could  be  translated  into  goodness  was  not  a  mere  objective 
acquaintance  with  scientific  laws  of  bodies,  but  rather  an 
essential  intussusception  of  reality  within  the  soul.  And 
thus  from  both  points  of  view,  the  soul  was  the  middle 
term  by  which  knowledge  and  goodness  were  brought  to- 
gether; but  the  soul  in  this  sense  was  not  grasped  before 
Socrates.  The  final  meaning  of  the  doctrine,  however,  is 
closely  allied  with  the  thought  of  Philolaus  that  the  best 
life  is  that  in  which  the  divine  principle  of  Harmony  is 
enthroned  in  the  soul.  For  both  authors,  the  soul  can 
develop  intrinsically  the  ultimate  reality,  but  Socrates 
had  a  more  profound  and  comprehensive  understanding 
of  the  soul  and  of  reality. 

Democritus  and  Plato  seem  to  have  approached  the 
ethical  problem  from  opposite  directions.  Democritus  saw 
that  even  in  a  world  where  all  was  matter  and  the  void, 
as  Leucippus  had  affirmed,  the  life  of  man  constituted  a 
special  province  which  demanded  separate  attention;  and 
he  therefore  attempted  to  show  how  the  principles  which 
he  posited  for  the  world  at  large  could  explain  the  actions 
of  men.  On  the  other  hand,  Plato  saw  that,  even  granting 
the  preeminent  significance  of  the  soul,  which  Socrates  had 
asserted,  yet  the  soul  had  relations  with  another  kind  of 
thing  which  constituted  the  largest  part  of  the  world; 
and  he  accordingly  attempted  to  show  how  the  principles 
which  he  discovered  in  the  soul  could  be  used  to  explain 

C  292  3 


PRACTICAL  AND  ETHICAL  IMPLICATIONS 

the  world  as  a  whole,  or  how  the  world  must  be  conceived 
in  order  to  account  for  the  presence  of  soul  in  it.  Thus  for 
Democritus  the  cosmological  problem  was  primary,  the 
ethical  manifestly  secondary;  while  for  Plato  this  order 
was  reversed.  But  each  of  these  thinkers,  from  a  different 
point  of  view,  handled  ethics  in  a  systematic  way,  and  for 
our  present  purpose  that  is  the  significant  fact.  Socrates 
had  been  the  first  to  appreciate  the  distinctive  import  of 
human  life,  but  he  had  been  too  engrossed  with  his  mission 
as  a  teacher  to  do  much  more  than  preach  the  dignity  of 
life  and  suggest  answers  to  the  questions  it  raised.  Democ- 
ritus and  Plato  at  about  the  same  time  were  the  first  to 
develop  a  systematic  treatment  of  the  ethical  problem, 
the  former  from  a  materialistic,  the  latter  from  an 
idealistic,  standpoint. 

Now  if  we  pause  for  a  moment  and  look  back  over  this 
resume,  we  shall  find  that,  aside  from  the  Milesians  for 
whom  evidence  is  lacking,  all  the  major  figures  in  early 
Greek  philosophy,  with  the  exception  of  the  Eleatics  and 
Leucippus,  were  interested  to  some  extent  in  attempting 
to  explain  the  principles  of  human  life.  There  were  scien- 
tists, like  Oenopides  and  Meton  and  Hippocrates  of 
Chios,  who  devoted  themselves  entirely  to  the  investiga- 
tion of  special  fields  of  nature;  and  there  were  minor 
thinkers,  like  Diogenes  of  Apollonia  and  Archelaus,  whose 
interest  in  philosophy  was  mainly  formal  and  scholastic. 
Of  all  such  we  should  expect  little  or  no  attention  to 
human  affairs.  But  it  is  surely  significant  that  all  the 
main  figures  in  philosophy,  except  the  Eleatics  and  Leu- 
cippus, manifested  more  or  less  curiosity  in  regard  to  the 
principles  that  govern  human  existence.  To  this  list  should 
also  be  added  many  writers,  like  Epicharmus,  Pindar,  and 
Euripides,  whose  literary  form  ordinarily  excludes  them 

C  293  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

from  the  consideration  of  modern  historians  of  philos- 
ophy, but  who  nevertheless  touched  on  the  problems  of 
life  with  a  keen  insight  that  was  not  lost  on  Plato  and 
Aristotle.  From  these  facts  there  can  be  but  one  conclu- 
sion, namely,  that  there  was  a  continuous,  living  tradition 
of  interest  in  these  ethical  questions  at  least  from  the  time 
of  Pythagoras.  This  interest  was  never  the  main  one  in 
presocratic  philosophy,  which  was  always  preoccupied 
with  the  world  as  a  whole ;  but  it  was  present  and  active 
both  in  the  main  current  of  cosmology  and  in  other 
thoughtful  circles.  Its  relative  importance  within  the  cos- 
mological  speculation  ranged  from  the  very  high  position 
accorded  it  by  Pythagoreanism  to  its  absence  in 
Eleaticism. 

Since  this  interest  was  present  in  presocratic  inquiry,  its 
presence  in  the  second  period  cannot  be  used  as  a  distinc- 
tive mark  of  this  period ;  nor  can  we  say  that  the  Sophists 
and  Socrates,  who  inaugurated  the  second  period,  origi- 
nated the  philosophic  investigation  of  conduct.  What 
these  thinkers  were  the  first  to  do  was  to  take  up  the  con- 
sideration of  conduct  in  its  social,  not  its  cosmological, 
context.  Consequently  the  study  of  human  life,  both  in  its 
individual  and  its  political  aspects,  asserted  for  itself  a 
position  independent  of  cosmology,  and  began  to  form  a 
separate  discipline  within  the  general  field  of  philosophy. 
The  full  development  of  this  tendency  and  the  clear  dis- 
tinction of  ethics  from  politics  did  not  occur  until  Aris- 
totle systematized  philosophic  and  scientific  investigation. 
Thus  it  may  be  said  that  the  second  period  of  Greek  phi- 
losophy took  up  the  rude  ethical  questionings  and  doc- 
trines of  the  first  period,  gave  them  separate,  systematic 
consideration,  and  so  created  the  discipline  called  ethics. 

Recognition  of  the  ethical  doctrines  embedded  in  the 

C  294  3 


PRACTICAL  AND  ETHICAL  IMPLICATIONS 

thought  of  the  first  period  suggests  a  somewhat  different 
interpretation  of  the  characters  of  these  early  thinkers  than 
ordinarily  results  from  reading  the  histories  of  philosophy. 
All  such  titles  as  cosmologist  or  physiologue  or  material- 
ist with  their  accompanying  stereotyped  tags  of  monism 
or  pluralism  tend  to  raise  connotations  of  a  cold,  formalis- 
tic,  far-away  unreality;  and  when  this  frigid  limbo  is 
furnished  with  such  notions  as  that  water  or  fire  is  the 
material  cause  of  everything,  or  that  we  think  with  our 
blood,  or  that  air  turns  into  stones,  the  whole  combina- 
tion takes  on  a  ridiculous  light.  It  is  well  to  correct  such 
impressions  with  the  idea  that  these  early  inquirers  into 
the  nature  of  the  world  were  intensely  concerned  with 
human  existence  in  all  its  compelling,  tantalizing  insist- 
ence. Furthermore,  most  of  them  not  only  speculated  on 
the  meaning  of  life,  but  also  occupied  themselves  with 
its  hard,  practical  problems. 

Thus  Thales  is  said  to  have  favored  an  Ionian  federal 
state  with  the  capital  at  Teos,  to  have  introduced  the 
Phoenician  practice  of  steering  ships  by  Ursa  minor,  and 
to  have  made  improvements  in  the  calendar.  Anaximan- 
der's  name  is  connected  with  the  gnomon  and  the  first 
map  of  the  earth;  and  he  conducted  a  colony  of  fellow- 
citizens,  probably  to  the  shores  of  the  Pontus.  Anaxi- 
menes  does  not  appear  to  have  been  interested  in  practical 
problems,  any  more  than  he  was  in  original  investigation 
of  nature;  and  the  absence  of  these  two  interests,  which 
were  found  in  his  predecessors,  marks  him  as  a  scholastic 
thinker.  Pythagoras  is  said  to  have  left  Samos  to  escape 
the  tyranny  of  Polycrates,  and  that  may  well  mean  that 
he  attempted  to  meddle  with  government ;  the  Order  that 
he  founded  in  Croton  was  not  primarily  political,  but  the 
discipline  it  imposed  on  its  members  brought  it  into  con- 

C  295  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

flict  with  the  state  and  the  authority  he  exercised  was  in 
fact  partly  political.  Xenophanes  and  Heraclitus,  like 
Anaximenes,  do  not  appear  to  have  been  either  practical 
or  scientific  in  the  strict  sense.  Parmenides  engaged  in  poli- 
tics and  is  said  to  have  made  laws  for  his  native  city  of 
Elea.  Empedocles  also  took  part  in  politics  and  appears 
as  the  leader  of  the  democratic  party  in  Acragas  in  the 
troublous  events  that  occurred  after  the  death  of  Theron ; 
whether  he  actually  practised  medicine  or  was  interested 
in  it  from  a  theoretical  standpoint,  we  do  not  know.  Of 
Anaxagoras  and  Leucippus  there  is  no  record  of  practical 
activities,  and  we  need  not  continue  this  catalog  further 
than  to  add  that  Zeno  took  part  in  politics,  Melissus  was 
a  Samian  general  who  defeated  the  Athenians,  Protagoras 
legislated  for  Thurii,  and  Gorgias  was  sent  as  ambassador 
from  Leontini  to  Athens.  The  activities  of  these  early 
thinkers,  which  have  just  been  enumerated,  are  enough  to 
show  that  many  of  the  cosmologists  were  practical  men 
of  affairs;  and  when  this  fact  is  joined  with  their  interest 
in  the  principles  of  human  activity,  we  ought  to  be  able 
to  gain  a  truer  appreciation  of  the  total  inquiry  of  the 
period.  In  reality,  cosmology  is  a  name  applied  to  this 
inquiry  simply  on  account  of  its  predominant  tendency; 
but  besides  this  major  interest,  there  were  numerous  minor 
ones  of  a  practical  or  a  purely  scientific  nature.  We  have 
already  had  occasion  to  notice  that  philosophy  at  this 
time  was  not  departmentalized  and  we  can  now  see  some 
of  the  various  strands  in  the  thread  of  its  development. 
It  is  to  be  thought  of  as  a  general  curiosity,  frequently 
spurred  on  by  some  practical  need,  but  immediately  rising 
above  the  mere  requirements  of  that  need,  and  directing 
itself  to  any  and  every  feature  of  the  environment  accord- 
ing to  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  the  individual  thinker. 

[2963 


PRACTICAL  AND  ETHICAL  IMPLICATIONS 

If  we  attempt  to  mark  the  progress  of  ethical  reflection 
among  the  Greeks,  we  can  do  no  better  than  use  the  char- 
acters in  the  First  Book  of  Plato's  Republic  as  a  guide  or 
standard.  Whether  Plato  consciously  meant  to  portray 
types  of  ethical  development  or  not,  the  dramatis  personae 
of  this  Book  may  be  conveniently  thought  of  as  personifi- 
cations of  successive  levels  of  morality.  From  this  point 
of  view,  the  aged  Cephalus  may  be  considered  as  the  rep- 
resentative of  the  primitive,  precustomary  stage,  in  which 
a  concrete  question  of  right  or  wrong  is  decided  according 
to  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  the  case,  and  which  cor- 
responds to  the  themistes  or  isolated  dooms  in  legal  devel- 
opment; this  stage  therefore  antedates  the  employment 
of  general  concepts,  and  when  Socrates  injects  a  thought 
of  this  character  into  the  conversation,  Cephalus  happily 
remembers  an  engagement  and  begs  to  be  excused.  Pole- 
marchus  may  be  taken  to  signify  a  second  stage,  which  we 
may  call  customary,  or  proverbial,  and  in  which  questions 
of  conduct  are  referred  to  a  standard  more  or  less  fixed 
by  recognized  precedents  and  crystallized  in  proverbs; 
this  stage  therefore  has  advanced  to  the  point  of  forming 
rough  objective  classes  of  actions.  A  third  stage  is  indi- 
cated by  Thrasymachus,  who  typifies  reflective  but  un- 
critical thinking,  in  which  superficial  plausibility  is  mis- 
taken for  logical  treatment;  Plato's  choice  of  a  Sophist 
to  represent  this  period  tends  to  make  us  underrate  the 
level  and  put  it  out  of  historical  perspective,  but  in  reality 
it  is  here  that  the  attempt  is  first  made  to  find  some  com- 
prehensive, subjective  explanation  of  the  traditional 
classes  of  actions,  and  ethics  begins.  The  fourth  and  final 
stage  is  portrayed  by  Glaucon,  Adimantus,  and  Socrates; 
this  is  characterized  by  critical,  fully  self-conscious,  ra- 
tional thought,  and  its  superiority  over  the  third  stage  lies 

C  297  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

mainly  in  the  possession  of  a  logical  apparatus  and  an 
understanding  of  psychology. 

Without  attempting  to  discuss  the  difficulties  of  this 
classification  or  to  define  the  idea  of  progress  which  it  pre- 
supposes, let  us  simply  apply  it  to  historical  Greek  moral- 
ity, as  far  as  we  know  it.  We  should  hardly  expect  to  find 
any  literary  records  of  the  first  stage,  which  must  have 
been  largely  prehistorical ;  but  in  what  is  termed  Homeric 
society  we  can  see  the  transition  from  the  first  to  the  sec- 
ond stage,  and  the  second  is  completely  pictured  in  the 
customary,  proverbial  morality  described  in  Hesiod's 
Works  and  Days.  The  third  stage  would  commence  with 
Pythagoras  and  last  through  the  Sophists;  but  there  are 
many  survivals  of  the  preceding  period,  as  for  example  in 
the  attempt  of  Xenophanes  to  set  up  a  new  customary 
morality  and  in  the  proverbial  character  of  Heraclitus' 
reflections.  Socrates,  Democritus,  Plato  and  Aristotle  all 
belong  in  the  fourth  category,  but  Philolaus  had  best  be 
taken  to  represent  the  transition  between  the  third  and  the 
fourth,  and  Democritus  had  not  completely  freed  his  mind 
from  the  proverbial  ideas  of  the  preceding  period;  both 
Philolaus  and  Democritus  lived  outside  the  main  current 
of  philosophical  inquiry,  which  in  their  day  was  largely 
confined  to  Athens,  and  in  spite  of  their  appreciation  of 
the  problems  of  knowledge  and  conduct,  their  logical  and 
psychological  attainments  were  comparatively  meager. 


CHAPTER    IV 

MINOR  TENDENCIES  IN  THE  DEVELOPMENT 
OF  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

The  grand  general  tendencies  which  characterized  the 
first  two  periods  of  Greek  philosophy  have  been  discussed 
in  the  first  chapter.  In  addition  we  have  considered 
separately  the  development  of  the  scientific  impulse  and 
of  the  ethico-practical  interest.  It  remains  for  us  now  to 
trace  some  of  the  other  tendencies  and  lines  of  develop- 
ment that  are  observable  in  the  first  period  and  that  issued 
later  in  fruitful  ideas. 

l .  The  Principle.  The  first  of  these  is  the  concept  of  a 
principle.  Under  this  term  I  include  all  those  substances 
and  forces  which  were  posited  by  the  various  thinkers  as 
ultimate  explanations  of  the  world.  In  some  cases  there 
was  more  than  one  principle,  and  in  other  cases  there  is 
difficulty  in  selecting  the  ultimate  principle  or  principles 
from  a  group,  all  of  which  appear  ultimate.  This  fact 
suggests  that  the  concept  of  principle  was  a  fluid  one, 
whose  connotations  could  be  stretched  to  suit  the  needs 
of  the  particular  inquirer.  If  the  Greek  authors  themselves 
had  any  word  to  render  this  idea,  it  was  probably  <f>vcn<;, 
and  in  its  usage  almost  fifty  different  shades  of  meaning 
have  been  discovered.  But  if  we  leave  such  work  to  the 
philologists  and  attempt  merely  to  form  a  composite  pic- 
ture of  the  principles,  we  see  that  these  early  inquirers 
were  searching  for  some  inner  nature  or  essential  character 

C  299  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

of  the  world,  underlying  various  superficial  manifesta- 
tions. Naturally  at  that  period  they  were  thinking  of  ma- 
terials ;  and  naturally  too  they  assumed  that,  if  there  were 
any  inner  nature,  the  varied  manifold  of  appearances  must 
result  from  a  past  process  of  transformation,  so  that  the 
present  inner  nature  would  be  also  the  primordial  condi- 
tion of  the  world.  What  led  them  to  assume  this  inner 
nature  was  no  doubt  the  appreciation  of  regularity  in  the 
external  data  of  nature.  The  logical  process  from  the 
idea  of  regularity  to  the  idea  of  an  inner  nature  involved 
the  presupposition  that  similar  effects  are  due,  not  to  simi- 
lar causes,  but  to  the  same  cause;  but  this  assumption  is 
latent  in  all  experience  and  was  as  evident  in  mythology 
and  cosmogony  as  in  cosmology.  We  must  remind  our- 
selves, however,  that  the  pure  idea  of  cause  was  not  de- 
veloped in  the  first  period  of  Greek  philosophy;  the 
thinkers  of  that  time  simply  said  that  their  principles  did 
or  became  such  and  such  things,  and  supposed  that  uni- 
formity in  these  effects  proceeded  from  continued  activity 
of  the  principles. 

The  list  of  principles  I  propose  to  examine  will  include 
the  following:  Water  (Thales),  the  Boundless  (Anaxi- 
mander),  Air  (Anaximenes),  Limit  and  Unlimited 
(Pythagoras),  Fire  (Heraclitus),  What-is  (Parmenides), 
Love  and  Strife  (Empedocles),  Mind  (Anaxagoras), 
Harmony  (Philolaus).  Of  the  first  of  these  we  know 
next  to  nothing;  but  water  is  an  obvious  substance,  and  its 
movements  and  transformations  are  not  easily  mistaken. 
Thales  may  have  supposed  that  it  embraced  other  phe- 
nomena, such  as  sap  in  trees  and  silting  in  rivers;  but  we 
shall  not  be  far  wrong  in  thinking  of  it  in  his  system 
mainly  as  it  appears  to  the  senses. 

The  Boundless  of  Anaximander  is  perhaps  a  little  less 

C  300  ] 


MINOR  TENDENCIES  IN  DEVELOPMENT 

obvious,  but  not  much  so.  We  may  imagine  its  creation 
in  the  mind  of  its  author  somewhat  as  follows.  The  pro- 
cesses of  nature  seem  to  center  about  the  oscillation  between 
the  hot  and  the  cold  elements,  neither  of  which  appears 
to  govern  the  other.  There  must  therefore  be  something 
behind  them  both,  which  produced  them  and  now  governs 
their  operation.  Furthermore,  these  elements  are  "oppo- 
site," so  that  when  one  advances,  the  other  recedes.  Hence 
the  advance  of  the  one  cannot  be  made  up  from  the  other, 
and  they  cannot  pass  into  one  another.  Whence  then  comes 
the  increment  when  one  element  advances?  It  must  be 
derived  from  a  boundless  reservoir,  which  keeps  supplying 
extra  quantities  to  the  opposites.  But  as  this  reservoir  con- 
tains stores  of  both  opposites,  it  is  neither  of  them;  it  is 
simply  limitless  substance.  Now  it  is  evident  that  this 
principle  is  not  an  obvious  substance  like  water;  Anaxi- 
mander  may  have  thought  of  it  chiefly  in  the  form  of  air, 
which  seems  to  stretch  away  to  infinity,  but  the  fact  that 
he  called  it  the  Boundless  rather  than  any  particular 
material  indicates  that  it  was  the  result  of  a  certain 
amount  of  rationalization.  It  was  not  merely  given  in 
sense  experience,  but  represented  sense  experience  modi- 
fied by  thought.  Here  then  is  the  first  step  in  the  process 
of  leaving  sensation  in  order  to  find  a  principle. 

The  Air  of  Anaximenes  probably  exhibits  the  same 
stage  in  this  process;  but  the  author  was  more  open  in 
his  rationalization  than  his  predecessor  had  been,  for  he 
imagines  a  state  of  his  principle  in  which  it  is  invisible. 
This  statement  and  another  to  the  effect  that  air  is  always 
in  motion  are  no  doubt  inferences  from  sense  experience. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  putative  process  from  air  to  clouds 
to  water  to  earth  to  stones  is  probably  pure  sense  experi- 
ence. Thus  Anaximenes'  principle  is  a  slight  modification 

C  301  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

of  sensory  data  by  thought,  perhaps  even  a  little  slighter 
than  the  Boundless  of  Anaximander. 

With  Pythagoras  we  are  met  by  the  ever  recurring  diffi- 
culty of  scanty  evidence,  and  must  again  have  recourse  to 
conjecture.  But  on  the  basis  of  the  interpretation  made  in 
Chapter  in  of  Part  I,  .wj;_would_ideiitify_. Limit  with 
^Jiire,  .and  Unlimited^w^ith_Air.  In  other  words,  Pytha- 
goras started  with  the  opposites  of  Anaximander,  but 
while  he  stayed  closer  to  sensation  in  imagining  them  as 
particular  substances,  he  went  further  from  it  in  his  doc- 
trine of  movement.  Physically  the  function  of  fire  was 
the  introduction  of  air  from  outside  its  original  mass,  but 
this  act  was  described  as  a  mathematical  limitation.  Hence 
by  means  of  this  analogy,  Pythagoras  attributed  to  a  sen- 
sible substance  a  past  unobserved  act  and  a  present  condi- 
tion, both  of  which  were  rationalizations  of  experience. 
Moreover  the  analogical  character  of  all  Pythagorean 
thought  tended  to  give  it  a  more  rational  texture  than  any 
other  presocratic  system  had,  with  the  exception  of  the 
Eleatic. 

Heraclitus'  choice  of  Fire  for  his  principle  suggests  at 
once  a  further  step  in  this  process  of  rationalization.  To 
be  sure,  fire  is  a  perfectly  obvious,  sensible  phenomenon, 
and  no  doubt  Heraclitus  started  with  it  as  such;  but  it  is 
more  impalpable  and  mysterious  in  its  coming  and  going 
than  the  material  elements  hitherto  assumed,  so  that  it 
was  easily  supposed  to  be  susceptible  of  powers  and  trans- 
formations which  could  not  be  patent  to  the  senses.  Hera- 
clitus frankly  prepares  us  for  these  by  remarking  that 
nature  loves  to  hide  and  can  be  discovered  only  by  cor- 
recting sensation  with  thought.  Moreover,  in  the  system 
of  Heraclitus,  fire  is  not  only  the  substantial  thing  we  see 
and  feel,  but  also  the  name  of  a  universal  process  of  com- 

H  302  n 


MINOR  TENDENCIES  IN  DEVELOPMENT 

bustion,  which  draws  the  other  forms  of  things  into  itself 
and  gives  them  out  in  opposite  condition.  Heraclitus  pic- 
tures this  process  under  the  figure  of  commercial  exchange 
of  wares,  and  of  an  upward-downward  path.  Thus  we  are 
back  with  the  opposites  of  Anaximander  again ;  but  while 
the  Milesian  had  taken  his  stand  on  sense  experience,  in 
asserting  that  these  opposites  do  not  pass  into  one  another, 
Heraclitus  appealed  to  thought  when  he  affirmed  that  this 
is  precisely  what  they  do.  As  an  eternal  and  spontaneous 
cosmic  process  by  which  opposites  pass  into  their  oppo- 
sites, fire  was  a  principle  considerably  removed  from 
sensuous  experience  and  it  therefore  represents  a  high 
degree  of  rationalization. 

In  estimating  Parmenides  from  this  point  of  view,  care 
is  needed  to  avoid  confusing  the  picture  that  he  paints 
with  his  method  of  painting.  His  method  was  undoubtedly 
inferential  and  logical  and  the  conclusions  were  therefore 
not  based  on  sense  experience ;  but  these  conclusions  referred 
to  a  world  that  was  substantial  and  corporeal,  and  lay  at 
the  bottom  of  all  sense  experience.  Parmenides  apparently 
did  not  know  how  to  get  from  this  experience  to  the  real 
world  of  thought,  but  that  did  not  to  his  mind  invalidate 
the  conclusions  of  his  thinking.  The  result  is  that  he  at- 
tributes to  the  corporeal  world  qualities  which  are  not 
sensible.  The  world  that  is  real  is  therefore  the  same  world 
that  we  perceive,  but  not  as  we  perceive  it;  it  is  a  highly 
rationalized  world,  which  can  be  known  only  by  pure 
thought.  Thus  the  ultimate  principle  of  Parmenides  is 
even  further  removed  from  sense  experience  than  the  Fire 
of  Heraclitus,  though  it  is  still  supposed  to  be  corporeal. 

It  would  hardly  be  possible  to  go  further  in  the  direc- 
tion of  rationalizing  the  objects  of  sensation  than  Par- 
menides went,  although  some  may  be  inclined  to  feel  that 

C  303  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

Zeno  succeeded  in  doing  so.  At  any  rate  the  development 
that  now  took  place  lay  along  a  slightly  different  line  and 
consisted  in  reducing  the  attribute  of  corporeality.  The 
previous  thinkers  had  taken  corporeal  objects  and  ascribed 
to  them  powers  or  qualities  that  were  further  and  further 
removed  from  the  experience  of  those  objects.  Later 
thinkers  took  forces  or  capacities  whose  corporeality  was 
not  amenable  to  sensation,  and  attributed  to  them  a  quasi- 
corporeal  existence.  It  was  manifestly  impossible  for  Em- 
pedocles  to  perceive  Love  and  Strife,  or  for  Anaxagoras  to 
experience  Mind,  as  individual  corporeal  objects.  Yet  if 
they  existed,  what  were  they*?  The  authors  seemed  to  feel 
that  they  must  be  corporeal  while  knowing  that  they  were 
not  corporeal  in  the  sense  of  objects  of  sensation.  Further- 
more it  was  their  form  or  capacity  to  cause  motion  rather 
than  their  corporeality  that  interested  Empedocles  and 
Anaxagoras,  and  they  therefore  ascribed  to  these  forces 
only  enough  corporeality  to  insure  their  existence.  Thus 
the  corporeality  of  the  principles  was  minimized,  and  ra- 
tionalization was  turned  in  the  direction  of  a  distinction 
between  substantiality  and  corporeality. 

Another  advance  in  this  direction  was  made  by  Philo- 
laus  in  his  discrimination  between  the  form  of  an  object 
and  the  corporeal  stuff  of  which  it  was  made.  Apparently 
he  thought  of  a  form  as  active,  that  is,  as  a  force  like  Love 
and  Mind ;  but  it  was  differentiated  from  mere  stuff  also 
by  its  mathematical  qualities,  which  were  of  course  geo- 
metrical rationalizations.  Hence  it  was  not  merely  as  an 
activity  but  as  a  thing  that  it  was  different  from  the 
ordinary  objects  of  sensation. 

That  was  as  far  as  presocratic  inquiry  progressed  on  this 
line,  but  it  was  a  noteworthy  development.  Cosmology 
was  essentially  a  systematic  attempt  to  explain  the  regular- 

C  304  3 


MINOR  TENDENCIES  IN  DEVELOPMENT 

ity  of  nature,  and  it  began  its  explanation  by  recourse  to 
obvious  elements  like  water  or  air.  From  the  beginning, 
the  preeminent  status  of  these  material  principles  drew  to 
them  certain  infinite  characteristics  previously  associated 
with  divinity,  and  to  some  of  them  also  were  attributed 
the  tenuous  and  penetrative  quality  of  soul.  But  as  the 
processes  of  nature  were  studied  more  carefully  and  ex- 
tensively, the  difficulties  in  explaining  them  all  as  the 
results  of  natural  changes  became  clearer  and  were  only 
temporarily  met  by  attributing  to  the  principal  element 
these  hypothetical  powers  and  capacities.  The  next  essay 
was  somewhat  different  and  consisted  in  giving  an  observed 
force  hypothetical  existence  as  a  cosmological  element. 
The  main  difficulty  here,  as  the  case  of  Anaxagoras  plainly 
shows,  came  in  connecting  the  observed  processes  of  na- 
ture with  the  principle,  or  in  other  words,  in  expanding 
an  observed  force  into  a  state  of  existence  suitable  to  ex- 
plain all  other  observed  forces.  In  both  types  of  explana- 
tion— that  which  theoretically  enlarged  an  element  and 
that  which  theoretically  enlarged  a  force — the  mental  pro- 
cess by  which  the  enlargement  was  effected  was  rationali- 
zation or  correcting  sense  experience  by  pure  thought.  And 
in  the  course  of  this  development,  the  principles  became 
more  and  more  a  different  kind  of  thing  from  the  ordinary 
objects  of  experience.  The  apogee  of  this  development  in 
presocratic  inquiry  is  found  in  the  forms  of  Philolaus, 
which  can  hardly  be  described  in  corporeal  terms  at  all. 

It  remained,  however,  for  Socrates  to  take  the  decisive 
step,  for  even  the  Harmony  and  the  Forms  of  Philolaus 
were  implicitly,  if  not  explicitly,  corporeal.  Socrates'  idea 
of  Forms  would  not  by  itself  give  conclusive  evidence  of 
advance  over  his  Pythagorean  predecessor ;  but  when  it  is 

C  305  H 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

put  into  conjunction  with  his  doctrine  of  soul,  there  can 
be  no  further  doubt  that  he  had  grasped  the  concept  of 
incorporeal  force.  Curiously,  neither  he  nor  his  great  pupil 
Plato  ever  satisfactorily  explained  the  ultimate  relation  of 
soul  and  form;  but  both  of  them  were  able  to  work  fruit- 
fully with  these  ideas.  Here  then  we  see  the  creation  of 
the  incorporeal  in  philosophy,  as  the  culmination  of  pre- 
socratic  rationalization  of  natural  elements  and  forces. 

2.  The  Intellect.  After  surveying  the  results  of  ration- 
alization in  early  Greek  philosophy,  we  naturally  ask  our- 
selves how  far  the  thinkers  of  this  period  appreciated  the 
meaning  of  what  they  did  in  forsaking  the  evidence  of 
sensation  for  a  higher  truth.  The  problem  can  be  more 
accurately  investigated  by  analyzing  it  into  two  subsidiary 
questions:  to  what  extent  did  these  thinkers  assume  a 
faculty  above  sensation1?  and  how  did  they  differentiate 
between  it  and  sensation*?  Let  us  now  consider  the  evi- 
dence on  which  our  answers  to  these  questions  must  be 
formulated. 

With  regard  to  the  Milesians  and  Pythagoras,  we  can 
say  at  once  that  there  is  no  such  evidence,  and  it  is  inher- 
ently improbable  that  these  thinkers  considered  the  matter 
at  all.  Xenophanes  seems  to  have  been  the  first  to  realize 
that  there  was  a  difficulty  in  attempting  to  understand 
the  world.  To  know  what  is  certain,  complete,  and  true 
(o-a^es,  Terekeaixeuov,  ervfjia)  is,  he  says,  impossible  for 
human  beings;  what  we  have  to  do  is  to  investigate  and 
gain  a  better  opinion  (Sokos)  that  shall  be  like  the  truth. 
Further  than  this  Xenophanes  did  not  go,  but  this  is 
enough  to  show  that  the  problem  of  truth  had  started  to 
force  its  way  into  the  consciousness  of  early  Greek 
inquirers. 

This  problem  reached  a  more  acute  stage  in  Heraclitus. 

C3063 


MINOR  TENDENCIES  IN  DEVELOPMENT 

In  his  fragments  we  meet  again  and  again  praises  of 
"wisdom"  and  "thought"  and  "understanding,"  which 
are  contrasted  with  folly,  ignorance  and  the  testimony  of 
the  senses.  The  kernel  of  the  whole  matter  is  seen  in  the 
statement  that  "eyes  and  ears  are  bad  witnesses  to  men, 
if  they  have  untutored  {lit.,  barbarous)  souls."  Here 
there  is  a  plain  distinction  between  the  senses  and  the  soul 
as  organs  of  knowledge;  and  the  implication  of  this  and 
other  fragments  is  equally  plain  that  wisdom  or  under- 
standing comes  from  the  soul.  Certain  of  the  author's 
statements  make  it  probable  that  he  believed  knowledge 
depended  to  some  extent  on  sensory  evidence,  and  we  can- 
not tell  precisely  how  he  differentiated  between  the  senses 
and  the  soul.  But  on  the  basis  of  this  evidence  that  we 
have,  we  can  say  that  he  definitely  attributed  a  knowing 
function  to  the  soul  and  that  this  function  was  superior  to 
that  of  sensation. 

Whatever  our  interpretation  of  The  Way  of  Opinion 
may  be,  the  fact  that  no  one  can  gainsay  is  that  Parmeni- 
des  opposes  it  to  The  Way  of  Truth,  and  thus  consciously 
contrasts  truth  with  mere  opinion.  In  this  he  is  following 
in  the  footsteps  of  Xenophanes,  but  he  differs  from  his 
predecessor  in  believing  that  truth  is  attainable  by  mor- 
tals. To  be  sure,  ostensibly  this  truth  is  a  possession  of 
the  goddess,  vouchsafed  to  men  by  a  revelation;  but  the 
apocalyptic  form  is  only  a  form,  for  actually  the  truth  is 
gained  by  the  processes  of  logical  inference  as  the  author 
himself  is  fully  aware.  Our  conclusion  must  therefore  be 
that  Parmenides  means  to  hold  up  truth  as  an  attainable 
human  ideal,  and  to  contrast  it  with  opinion.  In  the  next 
place,  the  end  of  the  Prologue  leaves  no  doubt  that  he 
deliberately  made  this  truth  a  matter  of  thought  by  argu- 
ment, as  opposed  to  the  habitual  method  of  inquiry  by 

L  307  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

eye  and  ear;  and  the  development  of  his  own  system  in 
The  Way  of  Truth  shows  how  he  followed  this  idea.  Now 
he  says  that  there  are  only  two  ways  of  investigation,  the 
way  of  truth  and  the  way  of  opinion ;  hence  if  he  identifies 
the  former  with  the  operation  of  thought  or  argument, 
and  contrasts  this  thought  or  argument  with  sense  experi- 
ence, he  must  mean  that  the  way  of  opinion  rests  on  sense 
experience.  Finally,  Parmenides  has  nothing  to  say  about 
the  relation  between  truth  and  opinion,  beyond  the  asser- 
tion that  opinion  has  no  truth  in  it.  In  The  Way  of  Opin- 
ion, however,  he  advances  a  theory  that  thought  is  the  sub- 
stance of  the  limbs  and  its  character  therefore  depends  on 
the  proportion  of  the  light  and  dark  elements;  in  this  he 
is  no  doubt  conscious  of  a  physiological  distinction  be- 
tween it  and  the  senses,  which  are  localized  in  particular 
organs,  but  he  makes  no  functional  differentiation  or  cor- 
relation between  them.  Thus  the  founder  of  Eleaticism 
developed  the  idea  of  truth  as  the  goal  of  all  inquiry,  to 
be  gained  by  processes  of  reasoning  without  interference 
from  sensation,  which  could  only  lead  to  false  opinion. 

Alcmeon  made  an  interesting  contribution  to  this  sub- 
ject by  suggesting  a  distinction  between  understanding 
and  sure  knowledge.  The  latter,  he  held,  was  a  prerogative 
of  divinity;  but  the  capacity  to  understand  was  within 
the  powers  of  human  beings,  and  by  this  capacity  they 
were  distinguished  from  the  beasts,  which  have  sense 
perception  only.  Alcmeon  of  course  knew  that  humans  have 
sensation  also,  and  hence  his  doctrine  had  the  effect  of 
setting  up  two  distinct  faculties,  understanding  and  the 
senses. 

In  Parmenides  and  Alcmeon  we  have  already  witnessed 
the  beginnings  of  an  interest  in  the  data  of  physiological 
psychology;  and  Empedocles  advanced  the  study  a  step 

c  308  3 


MINOR  TENDENCIES  IN  DEVELOPMENT 

further  by  his  theory  on  the  mechanics  of  thought.  To  a 
certain  extent  Empedocles  seems  to  distinguish  thought 
from  sensation,  and  he  localizes  the  former  in  the  region 
around  the  heart,  where  the  elements  in  the  body  are  most 
evenly  mixed.  But  he  does  not  state  explicitly  any  func- 
tional difference  between  thought  and  sensation  or  even 
feel  the  need  of  any  central  synthetic  faculty;  so  that  in 
the  end  thought  appears  to  be  only  a  more  perfect  percep- 
tion. At  the  same  time,  in  spite  of  this  physiological  con- 
fusion, Empedocles  certainly  did  appreciate  and  empha- 
size thought,  understanding,  wisdom,  as  the  highest  hu- 
man capacity,  and  in  so  doing  he  undoubtedly  contributed 
much  to  the  philosophical  aspect  of  the  problem. 

According  to  Anaxagoras,  the  soul  or  the  mind  is  en- 
tirely separate  from  the  material  elements  which  compose 
the  body.  Now  the  soul  must  be  the  organ  of  thought ;  but 
the  senses  are  bodily  organs  affected  by  physical  disturb- 
ances. There  arises  therefore  a  problem  as  to  the  relation 
between  the  mind  and  the  senses;  but  Anaxagoras  did 
even  less  to  explain  this  relation  in  the  psychological 
field  than  he  had  done  with  the  cosmological  relation  be- 
tween Nous  and  the  corporeal  elements.  It  appears  that 
all  animals  and  even  plants  had  Mind  or  intelligence,  and 
that  this  intelligence  was  the  same  wherever  it  was  found. 
y 'Hence  different  levels  of  intelligence  cannot  be  explained 
as  due  to  various  degrees  or  qualities  of  Mind  but  must 
be  attributed  to  the  relative  perf ectionj^f  the  b^ijxstru0- 
tures  jn j^]cii_MirjLdLdwjells.  In  other  words,  there  can  be 
no  thought  at  all  unless  Mind  is  present,  but  the  grade 
of  thought  depends  upon  the  opportunity  afforded  it  by 
the  bodily  structure  in  which  it  is  embedded. 

Diogenes  of  Apollonia  brought  consistency  to  the  scien- 
tific view  of  intelligence,  which  was  adumbrated  by  Par- 

C  309  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

menides  and  Empedocles;  for  he  made  his  principle,  Air, 
the  organ  of  thought  in  the  body  and  related  it  physically 
to  the  senses.  Thinking  is  the  activity  of  the  pure  dry  air 
in  the  brain,  and  the  special  senses  are  connected  more  or 
less  directly  with  this  organ.  Hence  thought  represents 
a  purely  physical  activity,  which  can  be  differentiated 
from  the  special  senses  but  which  is  in  reality  only  com- 
plete sensation. 

Philolaus  held  that  the  principle  of  Harmony,  which 
exists  in  the  soul,  unifies  sensations  and  makes  objects 
known  by  means  of  their  numerical  specifications.  Truth 
therefore  is  akin  to  number  and  is  attainable  by  the  soul 
through  knowledge;  falsity  (not  ignorance)  is  its  oppo- 
site, and  has  no  relation  to  number.  In  what  falsity  con- 
sists or  how  it  is  possible,  Philolaus  does  not  state. 

If  we  glance  back  over  this  development,  we  discover 
that  a  problem  of  truth  has  emerged  in  three  separate 
forms.  The  first  is  involved  in  the  question  as  to  how  far 
human  knowledge  can  penetrate  into  the  secrets  of  nature 
and  how  far  such  knowledge  is  a  property  of  divinity. 
This  question  was  discussed  by  Xenophanes,  Alcmeon, 
Empedocles,  and  Philolaus,  and  it  was  specifically  con- 
cerned with  the  natural  limit  of  knowledge.  The  second 
form  of  the  problem  arose  from  conflicts  between  the  views 
of  various  thinkers  when  the  natural  feeling  of  antagon- 
ism aroused  in  one  inquirer  against  the  doctrines  of  cer- 
tain predecessors  or  rivals  led  him  to  denounce  these 
doctrines  as  false.  This  feeling  was  manifested  by  Hera- 
clitus,  Parmenides,  and  Anaxagoras;  and  the  question 
raised  by  it  concerns  the  quality  or  the  Tightness  and 
wrongness  of  knowledge.  There  was  also  a  third  form  of 
the  problem,  which  was  due  mainly  to  physiological  the- 
ories and  turned  on  the  distinction  between  thought  and 

C  310-11 


MINOR  TENDENCIES  IN  DEVELOPMENT 

sensation.  This  point  was  handled  by  Heraclitus,  Par- 
menides,  Alcmeon,  Empedocles,  Anaxagoras,  Diogenes, 
and  Philolaus,  and  essentially  it  related  to  the  origin  or 
process  of  knowledge. 

The  question  concerning  the  natural  limit  of  knowledge 
had  virtually  become  obsolete  by  the  end  of  the  first  per- 
iod, for  as  both  theory  and  science  increased,  it  seemed 
to  be  taken  for  granted  that  a  positive  knowledge  of  nature 
was  possible.  At  this  point  the  Sophists  opened  their  at- 
tack, and  though  there  is  no  evidence  that  they  believed 
knowledge  to  be  a  property  of  the  gods,  some  of  them  did 
deny  the  possibility  of  truth.  It  is  therefore  interesting  to 
observe  that  when  the  great  philosophers  of  the  succeeding 
period  had  repelled  the  sophistic  assault,  they  posited  the 
ideal  of  a  complete  knowledge  as  a  characteristic  of  divin- 
ity, although  this  notion  amounted  to  hardly  more  than  a 
religious  sentiment. 

The  third  or  physiological  aspect  of  truth  had  led  in 
the  presocratic  period  to  a  variety  of  views,  which  had 
very  little  in  common.  These  views  were  affected  to  a 
greater  or  less  degree  by  the  general  cosmology  of  particu- 
lar authors;  and  to  a  certain  extent  also  this  question  of 
physiological  psychology  was  bound  up  with  the  question 
as  to  the  philosophical  distinction  between  truth  and  opin- 
ion or  ignorance.  Yet  the  systems  of  this  period,  crude 
though  they  were,  yielded  two  general  types  of  theory 
on  this  point,  which  were  significant.  There  was  the  view 
of  Empedocles  that  thought  was  merely  a  more  perfect 
sensation  and  a  function  of  the  body;  and  there  was  the 
doctrine  of  Anaxagoras  that  mind  was  unmixed  with  the 
body  and  of  an  essentially  distinct  nature.  The  doctrine 
of  Anaxagoras  was  of  course  useless  to  science  and  was 
not  pursued  further  for  its  own  sake;  but  when  it  was 

Can  n 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

combined  with  the  philosophical  distinction  between 
thought  and  false  opinion,  it  produced  the  concept  of 
mind  as  an  organ  of  thought,  distinct  from  the  body,  and 
as  such  it  was  developed  by  Socrates.  With  regard  to  the 
physiological  problem,  progress  was  made  during  the  sec- 
ond period  in  isolating  it  from  cosmological  and  episte- 
mological  considerations  and  investigating  it  scientifically. 

The  notion  of  truth  as  a  body  of  correct  knowledge 
distinguishable  from  falsehood,  ignorance,  or  opinion 
undoubtedly  existed  in  presocratic  inquiry;  but  it  elicited 
only  dogmatic  assertions  from  the  authors  of  the  period, 
for  it  always  rested  on  a  basis  of  personal  conceit.  It  was 
this  element  of  personal  particularity,  combined  with  the 
wide  variations  in  substance,  that  made  cosmology  seem 
so  vulnerable.  Scientists  still  offer  different  explanations 
of  certain  facts,  but  this  phenomenon  does  not  now  suggest 
scepticism,  because  each  modern  scientist  does  not  claim 
a  complete  and  final  truthfulness  for  his  own  views.  But 
many  of  the  presocratic  thinkers  did  this  very  thing,  and 
their  conflicting  claims,  as  well  as  their  incompatible 
views,  opened  the  way  to  a  general  attack  on  the  whole 
position.  Thus  this  notion  of  correct  knowledge  was  never 
investigated  on  its  merits  until  the  Sophists  assailed  it; 
then  it  was  examined  apart  from  personal  pride  and  be- 
came one  of  the  leading  topics  in  the  philosophy  of  the 
second  period. 

3.  Anthropomorphism.  It  might  seem  that  even  the 
slight  attention  bestowed  on  knowledge  by  the  presocratic 
inquirers  would  have  suggested  to  them  that  there  are 
two  sorts  of  things  in  the  world,  those  that  know  and  those 
that  do  not;  but  all  the  evidence  for  the  period  (with  a 
partial  exception  in  favor  of  Alcmeon)  shows  that  no  such 
distinction  was  felt.  On  the  contrary,  several  of  these  phi- 

L*  312  3 


MINOR  TENDENCIES  IN  DEVELOPMENT 

losophers  looked  upon  thought  as  one  of  the  properties 
of  material  things.  For  Xenophanes,  god  is  just  the  world; 
"but  without  toil  he  sways  all  things  by  the  thought  of 
his  mind" — the  world  thinks.  Heraclitus  speaks  of  "the 
thought  which  is  able  to  steer  all  things  through  all 
things,"  yet  this  thought  must  be  Fire.  For  Parmenides 
wisdom  is  a  quality  of  the  light  element ;  and  Empedocles 
believed  that  all  things  have  thought,  which  is  a  conse- 
quence of  even  mixture  of  the  four  elements.  Thus  there 
was  no  real  distinction  between  things  that  think  and 
things  that  do  not,  nor  even  between  animate  and  inani- 
mate things  until  the  time  of  Anaxagoras. 

Now  this  is  a  surprising  fact,  not  only  because  to  us 
the  distinction  appears  self-evident,  but  also  because  it 
was  taken  for  granted  in  the  rest  of  Greek  literature  from 
the  beginning.  For  Homer  there  were  gods,  heroes,  and 
men  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  rest  of  the  world  on  the 
other.  Hesiod  expressly  says  that  Zeus  gave  Justice  to 
men  only  and  that  not  even  the  animals  had  a  share  in  it, 
so  that  by  the  possession  of  this  quality  human  beings  stood 
out  from  the  rest  of  the  world.  Hence  the  cosmologists 
were  not  simply  reproducing  a  traditional  notion  when 
they  reduced  man  and  matter  to  the  same  terms ;  and  we 
must  ask  ourselves  why  they  should  have  done  so. 

No  doubt  the  fact  can  be  partly  explained  by  the  fail- 
ure of  the  cosmologists  to  study  humanity  and  civiliza- 
tion— their  interest  was  in  the  whole  of  nature,  and  they 
largely  overlooked  the  special  characteristics  of  that  part 
of  nature  which  is  man.  But  this  cannot  be  the  whole  story 
because  the  quotations  previously  given  prove  that  some 
of  them  at  least  did  notice  intelligence,  thought,  and 
understanding.  Our  problem  thus  becomes  specific  in  the 

C  313  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

form:  why  did  the  cosmologists  attribute  thought  to 
nature  % 

The  answer,  I  believe,  is  two-fold,  and  as  follows:  In 
the  first  place,  it  appears  that  intelligence  or  thought  con- 
noted directive  power  perhaps  more  than  what  we  mean 
by  cognition.  &Thus  Xenophanes  can  speak  of  god  (the 
world)  swaying  all  things  by  thought,  Heraclitus  of 
thought  steering  all  things,  and  Empedocles  of  god's  mind 
flashing  through  the  world  with  rapid  thoughts.  These 
are  phrases  that  suggest  a  governing  power,  rather  than 
a  capacity  of  becoming  aware  of  external  objects;  and 
that  seems  to  have  been  the  chief  meaning  of  the  word  in 
presocratic  inquiry.  Even  Anaxagoras,  who  distinguished 
the  animate  from  the  inanimate,  attributed  Mind  to 
plants,  and  such  a  doctrine  becomes  intelligible  if  mind 
meant  vital  force.  On  the  other  hand,  the  awareness  of 
other  objects  was  merely  a  matter  of  receiving  impressions 
from  them,  and  formed  part  of  the  general  interactivity  of 
natural  things.  A  man's  sensation  of  a  thing  belonged  to 
the  same  category  of  natural  processes  as  the  falling  of 
one  object  on  another  and  the  subsequent  effect;  and  it 
deserved  special  attention  only  because  the  man  and  the 
thing  perceived  frequently  appeared  to  have  no  physical 
contact.  But  this  was  explained  by  such  devices  as  invisi- 
ble effluences  or  images  and  was  thus  kept  distinct  from 
intelligence,  which  was  a  vital  force  directing  the  activity 
of  that  within  which  it  resided. 

In  the  second  place,  the  principles  assumed  by  these 
thinkers  were  materials  that  had  an  inherent  power  of 
movement  and  by  that  power  governed  the  world.  It  was 
therefore  this  directive  power  that  was  meant  when  the 
thought  or  intelligence  of  the  principle  is  mentioned.  Fur- 
thermore, the  principle  operates  within  the  world,  and 

C  3H  3 


MINOR  TENDENCIES  IN  DEVELOPMENT 

any  objects  in  which  it  exists  will  have  its  characteristics 
of  motion  and  intelligence.  In  this  respect  human  beings 
are  not  different  from  other  parts  of  the  world  in  which 
the  principle  works. 

The  point  of  view  thus  summarized  does  not  include 
what  Parmenides  meant  by  Xoyo?.  That  was  neither  a 
directive  force  nor  a  faculty  of  sense,  but  a  manipulation 
of  ideas.  From  the  author's  awkwardness  in  describing  it, 
we  may  be  quite  sure  that  he  did  not  understand  it;  and 
though  subsequent  cosmologists  appear  to  have  felt  the 
force  of  his  conclusions,  none  of  them  outside  his  own 
Eleatic  circle  adopted  his  method.  His  method  of  argu- 
mentation remained  an  anomalous  thing  in  presocratic 
philosophy. 

Now  when  we  pass  beyond  the  limit  of  cosmology,  we 
find  that  the  Sophists,  who  were  not  interested  in  nature, 
did  not  concern  themselves  with  intelligence  as  a  cos- 
mological  force  but  presupposed  intelligence  as  directive 
power  in  human  beings.  Indeed  it  was  this  human  intelli- 
gence and  its  various  external  manifestations  in  action, 
with  which  the  Sophists  chiefly  worked  and  which  they 
exalted  by  their  teaching.  But  their  attitude  toward  the 
capacity  of  becoming  aware  of  objects  was  entirely  dif- 
ferent. This  faculty,  they  suggested,  depended  on  a  physi- 
ological mechanism  that  was  peculiar  to  each  individual 
and  thus  produced  a  different  result  in  each  case.  Gorgias 
maintained  that  these  results  never  agreed;  Protagoras, 
that  they  agreed  enough  to  permit  the  striking  of  an 
average  (custom) ;  but  these  two  concurred  in  holding 
that  the  process  could  not  yield  a  common,  definite  knowl- 
edge. Thus  the  scepticism  that  spread  out  from  this  source 
was  founded  on  sensation  and  not  on  intelligence. 

In  order  to  answer  this  attack,  two  new  positions  were 

£  315  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

developed.  The  position  of  Democritus  and  the  Atomist 
School  was  that  knowledge  was  made  possible  by  a  faculty 
of  perception  that  was  better  than  sensation  though  of 
the  same  essential  nature,  and  that  this  faculty  of  per- 
ception was  joined  with  directive  intelligence.  The  whole 
human  mechanism  was  thus  unified  on  a  materialistic 
basis,  with  perception  as  one  of  the  faculties  of  intelli- 
gence. On  the  other  hand  the  position  of  Socrates  and  Plato 
was  that  knowledge  was  made  possible  by  a  cognitive 
faculty  entirely  distinct  from  sense  and  partaking  of  the 
nature  of  intelligence.  Thus  the  human  mechanism  was 
split  in  two,  with  cognitive  intelligence  on  the  one  side 
and  the  sensory  capacities  on  the  other.  Both  these  the- 
ories therefore  agreed  in  compounding  the  capacity  of 
representation  with  the  capacity  of  self-direction,  so  that 
neither  of  them  ever  succeeded  in  developing  a  definite 
notion  of  will  as  a  capacity  of  making  certain  ideas  effec- 
tive. But  while  the  Atomist  theory  accomplished  this  union 
by  reducing  intelligence  to  the  level  of  perception,  the 
Idealist  raised  perception  to  the  level  of  intelligence.  For 
the  former,  intelligence,  perception,  and  sensation  were 
different  modes  of  the  behavior  of  body;  for  the  latter, 
sensation  remained  a  bodily  process,  but  perception  and 
intelligence  were  united  on  a  higher  level  as  capacities 
of  soul.  For  this  cause  also,  Democritus  did  not  appreciate 
the  nature  of  reason,  while  Socrates  and  Plato  took  over 
the  Parmenidean  notion  and  made  it  the  chief  characteris- 
tic of  mind,  which  then  included  directive  intelligence, 
perception  or  representation,  and  logical  manipulation. 

The  lack  of  any  proper  distinction  between  human 
beings  and  the  rest  of  the  world  (including  what  we  now 
call  inanimate  objects)  makes  it  difficult  to  determine 
how  far  the  presocratic  thinkers  attributed  human  char- 

C  316  3 


MINOR  TENDENCIES  IN  DEVELOPMENT 

acteristics  to  things  not  human,  because  we  cannot  deter- 
mine what,  if  any,  characteristics  were  considered  specifi- 
cally human.  For  example,  if  intelligence  or  thought 
meant  directive  power,  that  may  have  been  supposedly 
observed  just  as  much  in  nature  as  in  men.  Or  again,  the 
force  of  Love  to  which  Empedocles  refers  may  have  been 
just  as  much  the  union  of  dark  cold  rain  with  bright  warm 
sunlight  in  the  plant  as  the  attraction  of  male  and  female. 
But  the  fact  that  all  these  terms,  such  as  thought,  justice, 
and  love,  were  traditionally  used  throughout  the  rest  of 
Greek  literature  as  specifically  human  qualities  makes  it 
extremely  likely  that  the  cosmologists  found  them  as  such 
and  extended  them  to  the  natural  realm  when  they  unified 
the  world. 

Now  etymological ly  the  term  anthropomorphism  ap- 
plies to  a  representation  of  a  non-human  thing,  usually 
a  deity,  under  a  human  form;  but  the  term  has  also  a 
wider  significance,  according  to  which  it  denotes  the 
ascription  of  any  human  characteristic  to  things  not  hu- 
man. And  this  latter  use  is  applicable  to  the  practice  of 
\  Greek  cosmology,  which  we  have  just  been  noticing. 
)( If  therefore  we  adopt  this  terminology,  we  can  say  that 
there  were  in  Greek  history  two  stages  of  anthropomorph- 
ism ;  the  first  or  physiological  anthropomorphism  consisted 
in  representing  divinities  with  human  figures  and  in  fact 
all  human  characteristics,  but  freed  from  the  limitations 
of  human  existence ;  the  second  or  psychological  anthropo- 
morphism consisted  in  representing  divinities,  not  with 
human  figures,  but  with  the  intelligent  capacity  of  human 
beings,  freed  from  the  limitations  of  human  existence./ 
Both  of  these  stages  of  anthropomorphism  were  no  doubt 
developments  of  a  primitive  animism,  so  that  the  second 

C  317  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

stage  was  not  merely  a  reconstruction  of  the  first  stage 
but  also  a  recrudescence  of  something  still  more  ancient. 

The  second  stage  was  a  phase  of  cosmology,  and  the 
position  is  fully  stated  by  Xenophanes,  and  repeated  later 
by  Empedocles.  The  words  of  the  latter  are  these:  god 
"is  not  furnished  with  a  human  head  on  his  body,  nor  do 
two  branches  sprout  from  his  back,  nor  has  he  feet,  swift 
knees,  or  hairy  parts ;  but  he  is  only  a  sacred  and  ineffable 
mind,  flashing  through  the  whole  world  with  swift 
thoughts."  On  account  of  the  biological  cast  of  Empedo- 
cles' system,  there  seems  little  doubt  that  he  is  he\e  ex- 
tending a  specifically  human  faculty  to  his  deity.  |The 
same  is  true  of  Anaxagoras,  but  in  a  different  sense,"  be- 
cause almost  all  qualities  were  eliminated  from  his 
cosmological  principle,  except  intelligence — it  is  almost 
literally  a  deification  of  intelligence,  and  one  of  the  purest 
examples  of  psychological  anthropomorphism  on  the 
materialistic  basis. 

The  humanistic  movement  tended  to  dissociate  man 
and  nature;  but  in  doing  so,  it  had  the  effect  of  taking 
force  out  of  nature  and  giving  it  to  man,  as  a  manifestation 
of  intelligence.  It  then  became  necessary  to  find  a  force 
outside  of  nature,  that  was  capable  of  moving  nature,  and 
this  force  was  called  god.  But  since  again  it  seemed  inevi- 
tably to  take  on  the  aspect  of  directive  power,  this  force 
that  ruled  nature  was  believed  to  be  intelligent  like  the 
similar  force  in  human  beings.  Thus  psychological  an- 
thropomorphism persisted,  but  in  the  second  period  it 
referred  to  a  supernatural  spirit  while  in  the  first  it  had 
referred  to  a  natural  substance.  This  psychological  an- 
thropomorphism with  respect  to  divinity  lasted  and  is 
with  us  still  in  religion,  but  Christianity  has  attempted  to 

C3181 


MINOR  TENDENCIES  IN  DEVELOPMENT 

bring  it  to  a  higher  level  by  emphasizing  the  element 
of  pure  emotion  or  sentiment  together  with  the  element  of 
directive  power  or  intelligence. 

Moreover,  although  the  separation  of  man  and  nature 
theoretically  allowed  the  latter  to  be  studied  in  itself,  yet 
there  was  a  practical  difficulty  for  the  simple  reason  that 
it  was  still  man  who  was  making  the  study.  The  human 
investigator  had  not  only  to  interpret  what  he  saw  in 
nature  in  terms  of  nature,  but  he  had  also  to  express  his 
interpretation  in  a  language  that  had  been  developed 
without  regard  to  any  thoroughgoing  distinction  between 
man  and  nature.  Thus  when  he  saw  natural  objects  move, 
his  tendency  was  to  think  of  the  process  in  terms  of  his 
own  movements,  i.e.,  as  actions;  or  when  he  observed  one 
natural  process  always  followed  by  another  natural  pro- 
cess, he  interpreted  their  relation  like  that  between  his 
motives  and  his  actions,  i.e.,  as  cause  and  effect.  And  lan- 
guage seemed  to  aid  the  confusion,  for  the  Greek,  like  our- 
selves, used  the  active  voice  for  natural  objects  as  well  as 
persons^It  was  and  is  as  natural  to  say  "the  sun  shines" 
as  "the  man  moves,"  although  the  subject  in  one  case  is  an 
inanimate  object  and  in  the  other  a  human  being.  Possibly 
the  accident  that  the  Greek  language  had  a  middle  voice 
for  reflexive  actions  and  that  most  of  the  tenses  of  this 
voice  were  not  differentiated  from  the  passive  was  a  spe- 
cial contributory  circumstance,  by  unconsciously  classing 
together  actions  in  which  the  agent  acted  on  himself  with 
those  in  which  he  was  acted  upon  by  some  external  agent. 
Be  that  as  it  may,  even  during  the  second  period  of  phi- 
losophy, the  Greeks  with  the  language  at  their  disposal 
did  not  succeed  in  ridding  nature  of  human  traits,  or 
rather  in  developing  the  idea  of  a  nature  that  was  entirely 

C  319  3 


.GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

free  of  human  characteristics.  Their  "causes  of  motion" 
were  reasons  and  seemed  to  act  intelligently,  so  that  in  this 
form  again  the  old  psychological  anthropomorphism  per- 
sisted. How  little  we  should  blame  them  for  it  can  be 
appreciated  by  reviewing  the  almost  desperate  struggle 
that  has  gone  on  since  their  time  in  attempting  to  rid 
science  of  these  very  anthropomorphisms.  Galileo  started, 
and  Newton  completed,  the  substitution  of  the  idea  of 
force  for  cause  of  motion,  and  now  we  are  told  that  "The 
very  idea  of  Force  is  .  .  .  what  would  be  termed  an 
anthropomorphism,  that  is  to  say,  it  ascribes  the  behavior 
of  inanimate  objects  to  causes  derived  from  the  behavior 
of  human  beings."1  And  after  we  have  substituted  "en- 
ergy" for  "forces,"  shall  we  not  still  be  guilty  of  anthropo- 
morphism in  speaking  of  inanimate  objects  as  having  a 
behavior  ? 

Thus  the  psychological  anthropomorphism  of  the  first 
period  continued  during  the  second  period  in  two  separate 
forms,  one  religious,  the  other  scientific  and  metaphysical. 
And  anthropomorphism  is  not  merely  a  stage  in  religious 
development  but  a  general  philosophical  problem. 

1  Frederick  Soddy,  Matter  and  Energy,  p.  20. 


CHAPTER    V 

THE  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

In  the  previous  chapters  we  have  followed  some  of  the 
more  significant  doctrines  from  thinker  to  thinker,  and 
attempted  to  understand  the  particular  features  which  a 
doctrine  received  at  the  hands  of  a  particular  author.  This 
method  has  in  reality  involved  a  presupposition,  which  we 
must  now  make  explicit.  If  doctrines  passed  from  hand 
to  hand,  if  there  were  tendencies  of  thought  that  seemed 
to  develop,  if  Greek  philosophy  was  anything  more  than 
a  name  applied  to  a  number  of  separate  individuals,  then 
there  must  have  been  some  kind  of  a  unity  in  which  the 
development  took  place  and  of  which  the  tendencies 
formed  part.  I  say  that  the  method  employed  in  the  fore- 
going chapters  implies  that  there  was  such  a  unity,  and 
we  must  therefore  attempt  to  justify  this  view. 

That  there  was  a  conscious  connection  between  some  of 
the  thinkers  we  have  studied  is  proved  by  the  references 
they  made  to  one  another.  Thus  Xenophanes  seems  to 
refer  to  Pythagoras;  Heraclitus  condemned  the  polymathy 
of  Pythagoras  and  of  Xenophanes  by  name ;  Parmenides 
almost  certainly  had  Heraclitus  in  mind  when  he  wrote  a 
certain  passage,  and  probably  he  was  thinking  chiefly  of 
the  Pythagoreans  when  he  described  the  opinions  of  mor- 
tals; Democritus  is  said  to  have  named  Anaxagoras;  Plato 
mentioned  a  good  many  earlier  thinkers;  and  Aristotle, 
who  knew  the  views  of  all  of  them,  seems  to  have  regarded 

C  321  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

his  own  system  as  the  consummation  of  all  the  previous 
philosophy.  Again  there  is  unmistakable  evidence  that 
from  the  beginning  Greek  philosophy  was  organized  in 
schools,  of  which  the  chief,  before  the  foundation  of  the 
Academy,  were  the  Milesian,  Pythagorean,  Eleatic,  and 
Atomist.  The  weight  of  evidence  from  these  two  sources 
cannot  be  ignored;  but  it  does  not  altogether  fulfil  our 
present  requirement,  for  the  first  contains  large  gaps  and 
the  second  indicates  several  different  centers  of  gravity, 
as  it  were,  but  no  fundamental  unity. 

The  truth  is  that  we  cannot  demonstrate  a  unity  under- 
lying Greek  philosophy ;  we  can  only  make  it  seem  probable 
by  adding  to  the  evidence  already  adduced  an  intepreta- 
tion  of  the  various  systems  which  shall  bring  out  their 
logical  interrelations,  if  any  such  are  to  be  found.  In  the 
more  detailed  examination  of  these  systems,  which  was 
made  in  the  first  Part,  I  attempted  to  show  in  each  case 
separately  how  particular  views  of  the  author  were  con- 
nected with  preceding  inquiry.  I  shall  now  undertake 
what  may  be  termed  a  metaphysical  paraphrase  of  these 
systems  as  wholes,  in  the  course  of  which  it  will  be  possible 
to  emphasize  their  relations  to  one  another.  A  paraphrase 
of  this  sort,  no  matter  how  successful,  could  not  be  claimed 
as  proof  of  anything  save  the  possibility  of  conceiving 
Greek  philosophy  as  an  organic  whole ;  or  perhaps,  if  the 
connections  could  be  shown  to  be  close  and  neat,  the  method 
might  establish  a  favorable  presumption.  Even  so  it  will 
be  worth  the  effort.  If  exception  is  taken  to  this  procedure 
on  the  ground  that  it  really  amounts  to  interpreting  the 
systems  in  such  a  way  as  to  establish  tendencies  and  then 
using  the  tendencies  to  support  the  interpretation  of  the 
systems,  I  must  at  once  admit  a  certain  justice  in  the  objec- 
tion. It  is  a  circular  method ;  but  historical  criticism  always 

C  322  ] 


THE  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

involves  this  process,  which  indicates  in  the  end  that  the 
facts  reinforce  one  another.  And  in  the  present  case,  we  are 
always  bound  to  a  certain  extent  by  the  expressed  views 
of  the  authors,  with  which  our  interpretation  must  be 
consistent. 

In  our  first  discussion  of  the  Milesian  thinkers,  we  en- 
deavored to  understand  them  as  engaged  primarily  with 
the  explanation  of  regular  movements  in  the  physical 
world.  A  logical  analysis  of  the  idea  of  regular  move- 
ments shows  that  it  embraces  under  regularity  an  element 
of  stability  and  permanence  of  identity,  while  the  move- 
ments suggest  an  element  of  change.  We  may  therefore 
think  of  these  Milesian  inquirers  as  attempting  to  recon- 
cile change  with  stability  in  the  physical  world.  This 
reconciliation  they  effected  by  means  of  the  idea  of  an 
active,  penetrating  substance,  which  maintained  its  iden- 
tity while  causing  change ;  and  when  they  had  discovered 
such  a  substance,  they  had,  it  would  seem,  satisfactorily 
answered  the  question :  what  is  the  world  %  But  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  we  find  that  the  question:  what  is  it*?  seemed  to 
their  minds  to  involve  a  further  question :  how  has  it  come 
to  be*?  because  their  notion  of  change  was  anthropomor- 
phic generation.  Hence  their  answers  took  the  form :  it  is 
now  the  product  of  such  and  such  a  process,  or  the  de- 
scendant of  such  and  such  ancestors;  where  the  element 
of  change  appeared  in  the  generation  or  process,  and  the 
element  of  stability  in  the  permanence  of  the  original  sub- 
stance. This  is  the  constructive  unity  which  appears  under 
the  varying  particulars  of  the  three  Milesian  systems. 

To  the  question:  what  is  it4?,  Thales  replied:  it  is 
water ;  but  as  to  the  process  of  change,  we  can  only  specu- 
late with  Aristotle  that  Thales  conceived  of  it  by  some 
improper  generalization  of  evaporation,  saturation,  silt- 

C  323  3    . 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

ing,  and  so  forth.  Anaximander  was  struck  by  the  periodi- 
city in  nature,  exemplified  by  the  seasons  and  the  celes- 
tial movements;  but  he  mistook  the  sensory  effects  of 
these  changes  for  their  real  nature,  and  so  invented  the 
doctrine  of  opposites,  which  dominated  cosmology  for  a 
generation.  His  answer  to  the  cosmological  problem  thus 
took  the  form:  the  world  is  a  boundless  body  which  has 
differentiated  itself  into  parts  with  opposite  characteris- 
tics, and  the  interplay  of  these  opposite  parts  is  the  regular 
process  of  nature.  Anaximenes  combined  this  doctrine  of 
opposites  with  Thales'  idea  of  a  unitary  substance;  and 
his  answer  therefore  was  that  the  world  was  essentially 
air,  which  had  differentiated  itself  into  parts  by  a  regu- 
lar process  in  opposite  directions,  that  was  still  observable. 
Thus  when  reduced  to  their  lowest  terms,  the  answers 
of  the  three  Milesians  to  the  problem  of  nature  all  ap- 
peared in  the  same  form,  namely,  the  world  is  a  changing 
substance.  Pythagoras  seems  to  have  emphasized  the  pro- 
cess rather  than  the  substance,  and  his  answer  therefore 
appeared  as  a  concept  of  stable  change.  The  difference 
between  the  Milesians  and  Pythagoras  was  largely  a  mat- 
ter of  emphasis,  for  the  idea  of  fixed  change  was  embodied 
in  Anaximander's  Justice  and  Pythagoras  was  unquestion- 
ably thinking  in  terms  of  substance.  But  the  point  worthy 
of  notice  is  that  in  his  mind  the  problem  centered  around 
the  methods  of  transformation  rather  than  the  substantial 
forms  which  resulted.  His  studies  in  geometry  and  har- 
monics had  shown  him  how  certain  parts  of  nature  were 
amenable  to  mathematical  specification,  and  this  probably 
led  him  to  conclude  that  the  relation  between  the  opposites 
was  a  principle  of  harmonious  interaction.  If  this  were  so, 
the  whole  world  from  its  gross  elements  to  its  minute  pro- 
cesses must  move  according  to  a  precise  law  of  interrela- 

.     C  324  H 


THE  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

tion.  Hence  his  answer  to  the  problem  raised  by  the 
Milesians  might  be  expressed  as  follows:  the  world  is 
essentially  a  mathematical  Harmony,  which  has  differ- 
entiated the  whole  into  parts  and  now  presides  over  the 
movement  of  the  parts. 

The  same  general  tendency  was  carried  a  step  farther 
by  Heraclitus,  who  emphasized  the  idea  of  change  to  a 
point  where  a  stable  substance  became  virtually  impos- 
sible. He  argued  that  if  the  world  is  a  unity  and  if  it 
changes  (presuppositions  of  all  earlier  cosmology),  then 
it  must  all  change,  and  nothing,  not  even  a  material  prin- 
ciple, can  have  a  stable  identity  of  its  own  or  be  perma- 
nently stereotyped  against  other  forms.  Hence  the  appear- 
ances of  stability  and  permanence  are  illusions  of  the 
senses,  which  must  be  corrected  by  thought ;  and  the  only 
real  stability  which  thought  can  discover  in  the  world  is 
the  very  process  of  change.  Essentially  this  change  is  the 
strife  of  opposites,  which  is  typified  in  the  process  of 
combustion.  It  is  impossible  to  determine  now  whether 
the  foregoing  considerations  were  primarily  logical  or 
physical,  but  at  any  rate  they  were  supported  by  appeal  to 
the  facts  of  nature.  Here,  however,  the  thought  reaches 
a  new  and  more  metaphysical  phase,  in  which  we  are 
shown  that  since  no  thing  is  identical  with  itself,  it  may 
be  identical  with  its  opposite,  and  therefore  the  strife  of 
opposites  may  be  considered  harmony  or  attunement  just 
as  well  as  strife,  and  in  general  change  is  stability  and 
stability  is  change.  But  Heraclitus'  own  emphasis  was 
on  the  aspect  of  change,  and  his  answer  to  the  cosmological 
problem  was  in  the  form :  the  world  is,  as  it  has  been,  a 
process  of  transformation,  in  which  no  thing  is  stable. 

Parmenides  appears  to  have  seen  that  the  metaphysics 
of  the  Heraclitean  position  made  nonsense  of  the  whole 

C  325  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

business,  for  it  rested  finally  on  the  assertion  that  a  thing 
is  and  is  not  identical  with  itself.  The  first  task  that  had 
to  be  undertaken  was  therefore  an  attempt  to  understand 
what  we  mean  when  we  make  an  assertion  about  a  thing. 
Parmenides  believed  that  such  an  assertion  implied  that 
the  thing  in  question  had  an  identity  by  which  it  could 
be  distinguished  from  other  things,  and  that  it  had  a  real 
existence  as  such  an  identity,  which  made  thought  about 
it  possible.  Now  if  you  apply  only  the  first  of  these  cri- 
teria and  do  not  bother  about  the  philosophic  question  of 
existence,  you  find  that  the  world  is  an  ordered  system 
of  relationships  between  apparently  separate  identities, 
the  knowledge  of  which  constitutes  science.  But  if  you 
argue  strictly  and  raise  the  question  of  existence,  you  must 
immediately  infer  that  empty  space  is  unthinkable  and 
non-existent.  Hence  two  conclusions  are  inevitable :  first, 
that  the  world  is  a  continuum ;  second,  that  motion,  which 
depends  on  empty  space,  is  impossible.  It  follows  that 
the  particular  things  to  which  we  give  names  have  no  ex- 
istence apart  from  the  world  to  which  they  belong  and  that 
the  world  as  a  whole  is  the  only  thing  which  does  exist. 
Furthermore  the  names  which  we  give  to  these  particular 
things  are  inapplicable  to  the  whole,  because  it  contains 
other  things  and  qualities,  so  that  the  only  statement  you 
can  make  about  the  world  is  that  it  is.  Thus  the  content 
of  the  existent  (substance)  and  the  fact  of  its  existence 
are  merged;  and  the  answer  of  Parmenides  to  the  cosmo- 
logical  problem  became:  the  world  is  a  stable  substance 
in  which  change  is  impossible. 

Philosophy  had  now  explored  the  idea  of  a  self-trans- 
forming substance  to  an  issue  of  two  contradictory  con- 
clusions, for  on  the  basis  of  that  idea  Heraclitus  had  made 
stability  impossible  and  Parmenides  had  made  change 

C326H 


THE  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

impossible.  If  there  was  to  be  any  further  progress,  it  must 
be  on  other  lines  but  it  must  also  be  able  to  reconcile 
these  two  extreme  positions,  for  stability  and  change  were 
facts  of  nature  too  obvious  to  be  denied.  In  reality  what 
Heraclitus  and  Parmenides  had  done  was  to  disentangle 
these  two  ideas  from  one  another,  and  show  that  change 
could  be  conceived  apart  from  substance  and  substance 
apart  from  change.  Hence  in  the  succeeding  systems  we 
find  the  idea  of  a  transforming  substance  gradually  re- 
placed by  the  two  concepts  of  matter  and  of  force,  which 
in  one  form  or  another  have  dominated  science  from  that 
day  to  the  modern  theory  of  energy.  The  first  step  in  this 
direction  was  merely  the  assumption  of  a  cause  of  change 
outside  the  substance,  and  we  may  trace  the  development 
of  this  concept  in  the  Love  and  Strife  of  Empedocles,  the 
Nous  of  Anaxagoras,  the  Harmony  of  Philolaus,  the  Form 
of  the  Good  of  Socrates,  the  god  of  Plato  and  of  Aris- 
totle; the  Atomists  too  are  only  partial  exceptions;  for 
the  first  motion  of  the  premundane  atoms  was  entirely  dis- 
tinct from  their  substance,  and  the  authors  of  the  theory 
simply  did  not  face  the  question  whence  this  motion  came. 
The  assumption  of  these  causes  entailed  a  discontinuance 
of  the  old  idea  of  spontaneous  change  with  its  subsidiary 
notions  of  coming  into  being  and  passing  away,  and  its 
place  was  taken  by  the  notion  of  rearrangement.  This  in 
turn  necessitated  substituting  for  the  old  unitary  sub- 
stance a  plurality  of  substances  which  could  be  continu- 
ally rearranged.  Moreover  the  withdrawal  of  the  cause 
of  change  from  substance  tended  to  leave  substance  more 
and  more  inert  and  colorless,  till  it  assumed  its  Aristotelian 
form.  It  was  always  supposed  to  be  qualitatively  stable 
after  Parmenides,  and  the  old  cosmological  problem  of 
reconciling  stability  with  change  now  became:  granted 

C  327  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

the  stability  of  substance,  how  is  the  appearance  of  change 
explicable1?  These  were  the  lines  on  which  philosophy 
now  proceeded,  and  we  may  remark  again  that  they  seem 
to  have  been  set  by  the  conclusions  of  Heraclitus  and 
of  Parmenides. 

Empedocles  started  with  the  Eleatic  conclusion  that 
substance  is  unchangeable,  and  on  that  basis  he  attempted 
to  save  the  appearance  of  change.  To  this  end  he  postu- 
lated four  qualitatively  distinct  substances  (earth,  air,  fire, 
water),  which  remained  the  same  in  quality  (dry,  cold, 
hot,  moist)  but  mixed  in  varying  proportions  to  form  the 
manifold  objects  of  nature.  He  also  assumed  two  forces 
of  combination  and  separation  (love,  strife),  whose  activ- 
ity produced  change.  Apparently  these  two  forces  in  turn 
were  governed  in  their  interaction  by  a  supreme  law  of 
necessity,  working  through  a  succession  of  cosmic  cycles. 
Thus  the  form  of  Empedocles'  answer  to  the  cosmological 
problem  would  be:  the  present  state  of  the  world  is  a 
stage  in  a  cosmic  process  which  is  essentially  the  steady 
mixing  and  separation  of  four  irreducible  substances  by 
the  force  of  Love  and  Strife. 

Anaxagoras  also  frankly  accepted  the  Eleatic  conclu- 
sion that  substance  is  unchangeable;  and  he  adopted  the 
idea  of  mixture;  but  he  differed  from  Empedocles  in  his 
conception  of  the  elements.  He  believed  that  you  might 
analyze  an  object  ad  infinitum  but  you  would  never  reach 
an  unmixed  or  simple  element.  On  the  contrary,  the  least 
particle  (which  he  called  "seeds")  of  any  object,  to  what- 
ever point  you  might  divide  it,  would  contain  portions 
of  each  of  the  fundamental  qualities  (hot,  cold,  moist, 
dry).  It  was,  Anaxagoras  held,  quite  unnatural  to  turn 
these  qualities  into  bodies,  as  Empedocles  had  done,  for 
that  was  like  cutting  the  world  into  quarters  "with  a 


THE  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

hatchet" ;  on  the  contrary,  if  matter  is  infinitely  divisible, 
the  smallest  particle  of  flesh,  for  example,  would  still  be 
flesh,  that  is,  would  contain  all  the  qualities  in  the  same 
proportion  as  in  the  undivided  object.  Hence  a  thing 
gained  its  individuality  by  the  particular  proportion  of 
the  qualities  in  its  composition,  and  change  was  the  mix- 
ture and  separation  of  the  qualities  in  infinitely  varying 
proportions.  The  proximate  cause  of  this  mixture  was  a 
rotary  movement  of  the  mass  of  the  world  in  the  course 
of  which  portions  were  detached  and  differentiated ;  it  was 
therefore  purely  mechanical.  But  Anaxagoras  seems  to 
have  asked  himself  what  lay  behind  this  mechanical  fact. 
Now  from  the  broadest  theoretical  outlook,  the  pre- 
dominant characteristic  of  all  physical  change  is  the 
order  and  harmony  that  runs  through  it  even  in  its  me- 
chanical aspect — it  seems  to  be  arranged  to  act  in  the 
proper  way.  But  the  only  force  capable  of  ordered  arrange- 
ment in  its  actions  was  the  very  Intelligence  that  was 
being  glorified  in  Athens  at  the  time,  and  Anaxagoras 
accordingly  called  the  governing  force  of  his  system  Mind. 
The  assumption  of  this  cause  also  enabled  him  to  account 
for  the  presence  of  intelligence  in  certain  parts  of  the 
world,  to  explain  the  difference  between  animate  and 
inanimate  nature,  and  to  rationalize  the  superiority  of 
human  beings.  Thus  change  was  made  possible  by  means 
of  mixture,  separation,  and  revolution,  gradually  spread- 
ing through  the  universe.  Therefore  the  answer  of  Anaxa- 
goras to  the  cosmological  problem  might  be  phrased  as 
follows:  the  present  state  of  the  world  is  the  result  of 
mixture  and  separation  of  the  opposites  by  means  of  a 
rotatory  movement,  which  has  been  extending  through 
the  universe  under  the  original  direction  of  Nous. 

Like  Empedocles  and  Anaxagoras,  the  Atomists  ac- 

t  329  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

cepted  the  Eleatic  verdict  that  substance  is  unchangeable, 
and  proceeded  to  explain  change  by  the  mixture  of  a 
plurality  of  qualitatively  stable  elements.  The  Atomists 
agreed  with  Empedocles  that  the  divisibility  of  matter 
was  physically  limited  and  stopped  with  particles  of  a 
definite  size;  but  they  also  agreed  with  Anaxagoras  that 
the  number  of  these  elements  was  infinite.  Change  was 
produced  by  mixture  and  separation  of  these  atomic  par- 
ticles through  mechanical  processes;  the  first  definite 
process  was  a  vortex,  but  behind  that  there  was  simply 
unspecified  motion,  assumed  as  a  characteristic  of  the 
masses  and  left  unexplained.  The  Atomist  answer  to  the 
cosmological  problem  might  therefore  be  compressed  into 
the  following  statement:  the  present  condition  of  the 
world  is  the  development  of  vortical  movements  which 
have  brought  together  and  rearranged  in  mechanical 
fashion  the  original,  unchanged  atoms. 

Philolaus  appears  to  have  attempted  to  reconstruct 
the  old  Pythagorean  cosmology  along  the  lines  of  the  new 
idea  of  Force.  To  that  end  he  developed  the  idea  of  Har- 
mony, which  had  been  prominent  in  the  philosophy  of  his 
Order  from  the  beginning,  by  giving  it  a  position  apart 
from  substance  and  supposing  it  to  operate  from  without 
on  the  stuff  of  which  the  world  was  constituted.  This 
stuff  he  probably  conceived  as  unchangeable,  according 
to  the  Parmenidean  doctrine,  and  as  composed  of  the  four 
Empedoclean  elements;  but  those  qualitative  distinctions 
of  its  parts  were  so  unimportant  to  his  mind,  as  compared 
with  the  passive  corporeality  of  the  whole,  that  the  con- 
cept came  nearer  the  Aristotelian  idea  of  mere  matter 
than  any  other  we  have  studied.  The  main  activity  of 
Harmony  was  the  impression  of  forms  on  masses  of  stuff, 
in  the  course  of  which  each  such  mass  became  separated 

C  330  3 


THE  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

from  the  rest  and  was  thus  individualized.  This  emphasis 
on  form  rather  than  physical  or  chemical  components 
was  the  forerunner  of  the  metaphysical  theories  of  reality 
which  appeared  in  Socrates,  Plato,  and  Aristotle.  It  is  to 
be  noted  further  that  the  action  of  Harmony  was  not 
mechanically  conditioned  but  free  and  intelligent  like  the 
Nous  of  Anaxagoras.  Thus  the  answer  of  Philolaus  to  the 
cosmological  problem  might  be  reduced  to  a  proposition 
like  this :  the  present  appearance  of  the  world  is  the  result 
of  the  impression  of  form  (numbers)  on  the  formless  stuff 
of  the  world-sphere  by  the  action  of  Harmony,  a  process 
which  has  both  broken  up  matter  into  individual  objects 
and  established  orderly  interrelations  (harmony)  between 
these  objects. 

In  the  assumption  of  Love  and  Strife  by  Empedocles 
and  of  Mind  by  Anaxagoras  we  have  seen  the  appearance 
of  a  new  tendency  in  philosophy,  which  was  to  become  of 
paramount  importance.  It  was  a  biological  interest,  which 
implied  a  growing  consciousness  of  the  difference  between 
animate  and  inanimate  nature,  and  which  probably  was 
stimulated  by  the  rise  of  scientific  medicine.  A  rudimen- 
tary concern  with  vital  processes  had  been  present  in  cos- 
mology from  the  time  of  Anaximander  and  had  issued  in 
various  ethical  and  practical  doctrines;  but  it  now  as- 
sumed a  different  aspect  in  that  it  became  a  manifestation 
of  the  spirit  of  organized  investigation  of  nature  in  sep- 
arate fields,  as  distinct  from  the  old  general  cosmological 
speculation — a  spirit  that  was  no  doubt  partly  induced 
by  the  mere  accumulation  of  data  in  these  separate  fields 
and  partly  by  the  fruitlessness  of  cosmology.  The  earliest 
Sophists,  who  had  the  rudiments  of  a  genuine  philosophic 
interest,  in  emphasizing  the  futility  of  cosmology  were 
led  to  contrast  this  speculative  use  of  the  mind  with  its 

C  331  1 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

practical  use,  as  evidenced  by  all  the  institutions  of  civili- 
zation. And  this  doctrine  fell  upon  good  ground  at  Athens, 
where  the  Periclean  democracy  was  becoming  self- 
conscious  and  self-confident  after  half  a  century  of 
political  and  commercial  success.  Thus  the  contrast  be- 
tween animate  and  inanimate  nature,  which  had  grown 
to  prominence  in  cosmology,  was  changed  by  the  influence 
of  the  Sophists  at  Athens,  into  a  contrast  between  human 
intelligence,  and  the  brute  movement  of  the  rest  of  the 
world.  Further  investigation  of  this  intelligence  by  the 
Sophists  was  rendered  impossible  by  their  preoccupation 
with  their  own  fortunes,  but  was  undertaken  by  Socrates. 
His  particular  concern  was  with  human  knowledge  and 
conduct,  to  the  exclusion  not  only  of  cosmological  specu- 
lation but  also  of  all  natural  knowledge.  But  these  human 
problems  were  taken  up  by  Philolaus,  Democritus,  and 
Plato,  and  given  a  place  in  philosophy  by  the  side  of  scien- 
tific and  cosmological  considerations;  and  the  whole  con- 
struction was  systematized  by  Aristotle.  There  can  be  no 
question  that  Socrates,  Plato,  and  Aristotle  were  fully 
conscious  of  previous  philosophical  development,  and 
that  they  utilized  their  several  interpretations  of  that 
development  in  constructing  their  own  contributions  to 
philosophy. 

We  shall  not  pursue  further  the  attempt  to  appreciate 
the  connections  between  the  various  thinkers  in  Greek 
philosophy,  as  those  connections  in  the  second  period  are 
too  well  known  to  call  for  restatement.  If  the  attempt 
thus  far  has  been  successful,  it  has  demonstrated  the  pos- 
sibility of  conceiving  a  unity  underneath  the  different 
cosmological  systems  of  the  first  period  and  an  unbroken 
connection  between  the  first  and  second  periods,  so  that 
the  whole,  in  spite  of  the  variations  which  are  so  frequently 

C  332  3 


THE  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

emphasized,  appears  as  an  organic  growth  of  ideas.  From 
this  point  of  view  the  specific  differences  in  the  thought  of 
various  philosophers  and  periods  take  on  a  permanent 
significance  as  attempts  to  rationalize  new  experiences  or 
freshly  discovered  data,  and  reconcile  them  with  the  old 
facts  or  recast  old  facts  to  suit  them.  The  unity  which 
persists  is  always  a  logical  quality  of  the  thought,  but 
advance  may  lie  either  in  a  new  idea  or  in  newly  dis- 
covered data.  Greek  philosophy  is  thus  the  record  of  a 
concerted  tendency  in  the  Greek  mind  to  observe  environ- 
ment and  self  and  to  translate  the  observations  into  terms 
of  universal  human  significance. 

It  might  be  taken  for  granted  that  the  study  of  such  a 
record  would  be  valuable,  both  in  gaining  a  certain  sub- 
stance of  significant  thoughts  and  in  appreciating  the 
possibilities  of  the  human  mind  by  means  of  one  of  its 
great  achievements.  Such  a  view,  however,  cannot  be  taken 
for  granted;  if  accepted,  it  must  be  vindicated  in  the 
face  of  powerful  opposition.  Kant  speaks  with  disdain  of 
those  "learned  men,  to  whom  the  history  of  philosophy 
(both  ancient  and  modern)  is  philosophy  itself";  and 
he  implies  that  the  function  of  these  historians  is  merely 
"to  inform  the  world  of  what  has  been  done."1  There  is  no 
doubt  that  this  view  is  still  widely  held,  and,  what  is 
worse,  that  the  history  of  philosophy  is  frequently  taught 
as  Kant  described  it.  Even  so  the  history  of  philosophy  is 
in  no  worse  a  plight  than  all  history,  which  always  gains 
value  only  in  proportion  to  the  understanding  of  the  his- 
torian. The  study  of  history  is  consistent  with  originality, 
and  of  the  latter  there  is  always  need,  as  much  in  philos- 
ophy as  elsewhere.  If  the  history  of  philosophy  were  to 

Prolegomena   to   Any   Future   Metapkysic,  Introduction  (Mahaffy  and 
Bernard). 

C  333  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

deaden  curiosity  and  inventiveness,  there  would  be  good 
reason  for  objecting  to  it;  but  on  the  other  hand,  is  mere 
originality  per  se  a  good?  What  is  original  can  only  be 
defined  by  reference  to  what  is  previously  known,  and  an 
inventive  impulse  without  historical  training  is  likely  to 
discover  for  itself  what  has  already  been  discovered. 

The  root  of  the  trouble  with  the  history  of  philosoph- 
ical opinion,  I  think,  lies  in  the  method  with  which  it  is 
frequently  pursued.  In  the  words  of  T.  H.  Green:  "The 
common  plan  of  seeking  this  history  in  compendia  of  the 
systems  of  philosophical  writers,  taken  in  the  gross  or  with 
no  discrimination  except  in  regard  to  time  and  popularity, 
is  mainly  to  blame  for  the  common  notion  that  metaphys- 
ical inquiry  is  an  endless  process  of  threshing  old  straw. 
Such  enquiry  is  really  progressive,  and  has  a  real 
history,  but  it  is  a  history  represented  by  a  few  great 
names."2  If  study  of  the  history  of  philosophy  means  that 
one  person  reads  or  hears  what  a  second  person  (the  his- 
torian) says  about  a  third  person  (the  philosopher),  then 
the  function  of  second  parties  tends  to  become  merely 
reporting  "what  has  been  done"  and  the  function  of  third 
parties  is  likely  to  appear  as  "threshing  old  straw."  But 
if  such  study  is  directed  immediately  to  the  works  of  phi- 
losophers themselves  and  the  professional  historians  take 
their  proper  place  as  third  parties  aiding  in  the  perform- 
ance, the  history  of  philosophy — and  not  least,  the  history 
of  Greek  philosophy — can  become  a  means  of  acquiring 
ideas  of  universal  import,  understanding  the  process  of 
ideas,  and  gaining  an  insight  into  the  natural  capacities 
of  the  mind. 

There  are  indeed  many  philosophical  problems  which 
cannot  even  be  adequately  comprehended  without  a  thor- 

2  Introduction  to  Hume's  A  Treatise  of  Human  Nature. 

C  334  3 


THE  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY 

ough  historical  preparation.  For  example,  how  can  the 
meaning  of  truth  be  appreciated  except  by  first  watching 
the  long  struggle  which  philosophy  and  science  have  made 
for  it?  We  begin  to  grasp  the  problem  after  we  have  seen 
one  age  assert  the  falsity  of  that  which  the  preceding  age 
pronounced  true.  Again  there  is  science:  do  we  have 
more  than  an  inkling  of  what  it  is,  unless  we  observe  its 
early  halting  steps  in  various  fields  of  investigation,  its 
growth  in  ideas  as  well  as  in  data,  and  the  correlation 
of  the  separate  departments  of  it,  as  geometry,  the  science 
of  space,  and  algebra,  the  science  of  number,  have  been 
brought  together  in  coordinate  geometry*?  Only  then  can 
we  understand  the  question  what  the  underlying  principle 
and  the  limitations  of  science  are.  Finally  consider  phi- 
losophy itself.  Sooner  or  later  every  thinker  must  ask 
himself  what  philosophy  is,  how  it  is  possible,  and  whether 
there  is  any  progress  in  it;  and  such  problems  can  neither 
be  grasped  nor  solved  without  a  thorough  grounding  in 
the  history  of  ideas.  It  is  in  fact  only  by  the  history  of 
philosophy  that  philosophy  becomes  aware  of  its  own 
nature.  It  may  or  may  not  be  the  function  of  this  history 
to  undertake  full  discussion  of  the  problems  that  arise  out 
of  it;  that  is  a  question  of  jurisdiction,  as  it  were,  and  a 
matter  of  comparatively  little  moment.  The  important 
point  is  that  only  through  the  history  of  philosophy  does 
philosophy  become  conscious  of  itself. 


APPENDICES 


APPENDIX    I 

THE  FRAGMENTS  OF  PHILOLAUS 

There  has  been  a  long  controversy  over  the  authorship  of  the 
fragments  ascribed  to  Philolaus ;  and  modern  scholarship  has  run 
the  gamut  from  the  view  of  Boeckh  that  all  are  genuine  to  that  of 
Burnet,  who  accepts  none  of  them.  Diels  regards  a  large  number  of 
them  as  genuine. 

Burnet  (pp.  281-4)  Dases  his  contention  mainly  on  the  facts  that 
the  fragments  are  written  in  Doric  and  that  one  of  them  refers  to 
the  five  regular  solids.  With  regard  to  the  first  point  Burnet 
says  (p.  282)  that  "Ionic  was  the  dialect  of  science  and  philoso- 
phy till  the  time  of  the  Peloponnesian  War."  But  (1)  he  admits 
(ibid.,  n.  5)  "one  Doric  (or  Achaian*?)  form"  in  the  fragments  of 
Alcmeon  of  Croton,  who  must  have  written  considerably  before 
the  war  started;  (2)  he  holds  (Gk.  Phil.,  I,  p.  231)  that  the  Swro-ot 
\6yoi,  written  in  Doric,  belong  to  the  end  of  the  fifth  century, 
which  is  the  period  of  the  war;  (3)  Philolaus  probably  lived 
through  the  war  (cf.  Burnet,  p.  276).  With  regard  to  the  second 
point,  Burnet  asserts  (p.  283)  "there  can  be  no  doubt  that  one  of  the 
fragments  refers  to  the  five  regular  solids,"  whereas  the  Scholia 
to  Euclid  say  that  these  were  not  known  to  the  Pythagoreans  but 
were  discovered  in  the  Academy.  But  ( 1 )  the  fragment  in  question 
(12,  DFV,  p.  244)  does  not  mention  the  solids  or  geometrical 
figures,  but  refers  to  five  "bodies,"  fire,  water,  earth,  air,  and  the 
hull  of  the  sphere,  the  last  of  which  Burnet  (p.  294)  accepts  as 
"a  genuine  Pythagorean  expression";  (2)  Aetius  (II,  6,  3,  DFV, 
p.  237),  representing  Theophrastus,  implies  that  the  five  regular 
solids  were  known  to  Pythagoras  himself,  and  "It  is  important 
to  remember  that  Theophrastus  was  a  member  of  the  Academy  in 
Plato's  last  years"  (Burnet,  p.  305)  when  two  of  the  figures  of 
the  regular  solids  were  supposedly  discovered  according  to  the 

C  339  H 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

Scholia  to  Euclid. — As  for  the  fact  that  Aristotle  "does  not  ap- 
pear to  have  seen  the  work  from  which  these  fragments  come" 
(Burnet,  p.  284),  it  is  evident  that  Aristotle  was  badly  confused 
by  the  "so-called  Pythagoreans" ;  there  are  other  works  which  we 
might  have  expected  him  to  know  but  which  he  does  not  mention, 
and  Burnet  himself  (p.  278,  n.  4)  has  called  attention  to  "the 
defective  character  of  our  tradition"  in  regard  to  Philolaus.  Until 
the  discovery  of  the  Anonymous  Londinensis,  no  one  knew  that 
Philolaus  wrote  on  medicine.  For  these  reasons  I  see  no  obstacle  to 
accepting  the  fragments  of  Philolaus  as  genuine. 

My  main  contention,  however,  is  that  the  views  set  forth  in  the 
fragments  can  be  properly  fitted  into  an  historical  development  of 
Pythagoreanism,  and  that  they  agree  with  philosophical  tenden- 
cies of  the  time  when  they  are  supposed  to  have  been  written.  This 
I  have  tried  to  show  in  the  chapter  on  Philolaus  in  Part  I.  I  give 
a  translation  of  the  fragments  (according  to  the  arrangement 
in  DFV),  in  order  to  facilitate  a  better  understanding  of  their 
contents. 

1.  In  the  ordering  of  the  world,  nature  (both  the  ordered  whole 
and  all  the  things  in  it)  was  harmonized  out  of  unlimited  and 
limiting  things. 

2.  It  must  needs  be  that  all  things  which  exist  are  limiting  things 
or  unlimited  things,  or  both  limiting  and  unlimited  things — 
limiting  solely  or  unlimited  solely  they  could  not  be.  Now 
since  they  are  evidently  not  composed  of  limiting  things  alto- 
gether, or  of  unlimited  things  altogether,  the  ordered  world 
and  the  things  it  contains  must  have  been  fitted  together  out 
of  limiting  and  unlimited  things.  This  is  apparent  also  in  fields 
of  tilled  land;  for  some  of  them,  formed  by  limiting  things, 
are  limits ;  others,  composed  of  limiting  and  unlimited  things, 
now  limit  and  now  do  not  limit ;  while  still  others,  formed  of 
unlimiteds,  turn  out  unlimited. 

3.  If  everything  is  unlimited,  there  will  be  absolutely  nothing 
that  will  be  known. 

4.  In  fact,  all  things  that  are  known  have  number,  for  without 
this  nothing  can  be  known  or  comprehended. 

5.  Now  number  has  two  special  forms,  odd  and  even ;  and  there 
is  a  third  form,  the  odd-even,  composed  of  the  other  two  mixed. 

C  340  3 


APPENDIX  I 

And  of  each  of  the  two  forms  there  are  many  figures,  which 
are  manifested  by  particular  objects. 

6.  With  nature  and  harmony  it  is  as  follows :  The  real  substance 
of  things,  which  is  eternal,  and  indeed  nature  in  itself  admits 
of  divine  but  not  human  knowledge — no  more  at  any  rate  than 
our  knowledge  that  it  would  not  be  possible  for  anything  that 
now  exists  and  is  known1  by  us  even  to  come  into  being,  if  it 
were  not  for  this  underlying  substance  of  the  things  (both 
limiting  and  unlimited)  from  which  the  ordered  universe  was 
constructed. 

But  since  these  original  factors  were  neither  similar  nor  re- 
lated, it  would  have  been  impossible  to  make  an  ordered  uni- 
verse with  them,  if  harmony  had  not  supervened  on  them  in 
the  way  it  did.  For  similar  and  related  things  needed  no  har- 
monizing; but  things  that  were  dissimilar  and  heterogeneous 
and  composed  of  unequal  parts  must  have  been  shut  up  together 
by  a  harmony  that  would  hold  them  in  a  natural  order. 
The  magnitude  of  a  harmony  is  a  Fourth  and  a  Fifth.  The 
Fifth  is  greater  than  the  Fourth  in  the  ratio  9:8.  For  from 
Hypate  to  Mese  is  a  Fourth,  from  Mese  to  Nete  a  Fifth,  from 
Nete  to  Trite  a  Fourth,  and  from  Trite  to  Hypate  a  Fifth.  The 
interval  between  Mese  and  Trite  is  9:8;  the  Fourth  is  3:4; 
the  Fifth  2:3;  the  Octave  1 :2.  Thus  a  harmony  is  five  inter- 
vals of  9:8  (sc,  whole  tones)  and  two  semi-tones;  the  Fifth 
is  three  whole  tones  and  a  semi-tone ;  the  Fourth  is  two  whole 
tones  and  a  semi-tone. 

7.  The  first  thing  that  was  fitted  together,  the  unit,  which  is  in 
the  middle  of  the  sphere,  is  called  the  hearth  (sc,  of  the 
universe). 

8.  Unity  is  the  beginning  of  all  things. 

9.  By  nature  and  not  by  law. 

10.  For  harmony  is  a  union  of  things  mixed  from  many  parts,  and 
an  agreement  of  variously  minded  beings. 

1 1 .  We  ought  to  see  the  effects  and  the  nature  of  number  in  the 
power  which  lies  in  the  decad ;  for  this  power  is  great,  perfect, 
and  omnipotent,  at  once  the  beginning  and  the  director  of  the 
divine  and  heavenly  life  and  of  human  life,  sharing  in.  .  .  . 

1  Reading  yiyvwffKOfiivwv  for  Diels'  yLyw<ric6fj.evov. 

L  341  3 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

Without  this  all  things  are  unlimited  and  meaningless  and 
obscure. 

For  the  nature  of  number  gives  to  everyone  knowledge,  guid- 
ance, and  instruction  concerning  everything  that  is  doubtful 
and  unknown.  For  not  a  thing  would  be  clear  to  anybody, 
either  what  it  is  by  itself,  or  in  relation  to  other  things,  if  it 
were  not  for  number  and  the  property  of  number.  But  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  number  by  harmonizing  all  things  in  the  soul's 
perception  makes  them  known  and  makes  them  correspond  to 
one  another  according  to  the  natural  relations  of  the  gnomon ; 
for  it  is  number  that  gives  body  and  distinguishes  the  propor- 
tions of  all  unlimited  and  limiting  things. 
You  can  see  the  nature  and  power  of  number  prevailing  not 
only  in  the  affairs  of  demons  and  gods,  but  also  everywhere  in 
all  human  words  and  deeds,  in  all  skilled  handicrafts,  and  in 
music. 

Neither  the  nature  of  number  nor  harmony  admits  of  any 
falsity,  for  that  is  not  proper  to  them.  Falsity  and  malice  belong 
to  the  nature  of  the  unlimited,  unknown,  and  irrational.  But 
falsity  has  no  effect  on  number,  to  which  it  is  inimical  and 
hostile ;  while  truth  has  the  same  nature  and  origin  as  number. 

12.  And  the  bodies  of  the  sphere  are  five:  those  within  the  sphere 
are  fire,  water,  earth,  and  air,  and  the  hull  of  the  sphere  is  the 
fifth. 

13.  The  brain  is  the  principle  of  thought;  the  heart,  of  soul  and 
perception;  the  navel,  of  the  formation  and  growth  of  the 
embryo;  the  genitals,  of  the  deposit  of  semen  and  generation. 
Brain  indicates  the  principle  of  man;  heart,  that  of  animals; 
navel,  that  of  plants ;  and  genitals,  that  of  all  things,  for  all 
things  bloom  and  grow. 

14.  The  ancient  singers  of  the  gods  and  seers  also  bear  witness 
that  for  certain  punishments  the  soul  has  been  yoked  to  the 
body  and  buried  in  it,  as  it  were  in  a  tomb. 

15.  (We  human  beings  are)  in  a  kind  of  prison  .  .  .  (our  guar- 
dians are  gods  and  we  human  beings  are)  one  of  the  chattels  of 
the  gods. 

16.  Certain  reasons  stronger  than  we  are. 

o.  There  is  a  guide  and  ruler  of  all  things,  god,  one,  eternal, 
single,  immovable,  like  himself  and  different  from  all  else. 


APPENDIX    II 

CONJECTURE  ON  THE  DEVELOPMENT 
OF  PYTHAGOREANISM 

The  historian  of  Greek  philosophy  must  adopt  some  working 
hypothesis  on  the  development  of  Pythagorean  doctrine.  The 
available  evidence  does  not  warrant  more  than  a  conjecture;  but 
that  much  at  least  there  must  be  as  a  basis  for  handling  the  source 
materials.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  every  treatment  of  Pythagoreans 
implies  such  an  hypothesis,  though  historians  have  naturally  hesi- 
tated to  develop  their  views  on  this  point,  owing  to  the  insufficiency 
of  the  data.  I  offer  the  following,  not  because  I  believe  the  data 
are  sufficient,  nor  because  my  interpretation  of  Pythagoras  and 
Philolaus  may  be  new,  but  only  because  I  believe  that  it  is  better 
on  the  whole  to  bring  implications  and  presuppositions  into  the 
open  for  frank,  general  discussion.  Sometimes  human  beings  can- 
not advance  at  all  unless  they  enter  where  angels  would  fear  to 
tread. 

1.  In  chapter  hi  of  Part  I,  I  have  given  my  understanding  of 
Pythagoras  and  the  early  views  of  the  Order.  The  account  there 
given  implies  that  Pythagoras  was  an  Ionian  profoundly  affected 
by  the  doctrines  current  in  the  Orphic  revival,  and  that  he  com- 
bined science  and  mystical  religion  in  the  theory  that  contempla- 
tion of  the  world  was  the  best  method  of  purifying  the  soul.  This 
theory  became  the  doctrine  practised  by  the  society  of  his  fol- 
lowers, which  thus  embraced  scientific  investigation  with  religious 
purification.  The  former  of  these  impulses  developed  into  a  cos- 
mological  system,  containing  the  following  points :  ( l )  the  world 
has  been  formed  out  of  two  things,  Fire  and  Air;  (2)  the  former, 
being  active,  drew  in,  as  by  breathing,  successive  portions  of  the 
latter,  which  was  a  void;  (3)  these  inhalations  produced  a  sepa- 
ration of  the  original  mass  of  Fire  into  limited  individual  bodies 
(sun,  moon,  etc.),  and  Fire  was  thus  called  Limit,  Air  the  Un- 

L*  343  H 


GREEK  PHILOSOPHY  BEFORE  PLATO 

limited;  (4)  the  process  of  separation,  being  progressive,  was 
governed  by  a  law  which  is  epitomized  in  the  tetractys  of  the 
decad,  and  which  is  also  manifested  in  the  succession  of  natural 
integers  and  in  the  harmonic  production  of  the  fixed  notes  of  the 
lyre. 

2.  The  views  given  by  Parmenides  in  The  Way  of  Opinion 
contain  Pythagorean  features,  but  are  not  meant  to  be  solely  an 
account  of  Pythagorean  doctrine ;  and  they  do  not  enable  us  to 
mark  any  progress  of  Pythagorean  philosophy. 

3.  The  society  which  Pythagoras  founded  multiplied  and  new 
branches  were  formed  in  different  Greek  cities.  Most  of  these 
branches  emphasized  mainly  the  scientific  feature  of  the  Founder's 
doctrine  and  tended  to  drop  the  primitive  taboos ;  they  were  some- 
times referred  to  as  Pythagoreans  or  Mathematicians.  A  few  mem- 
bers of  the  Order  insisted  on  the  original  purificatory  practices 
and  tended  to  neglect  scientific  investigation ;  they  were  called 
Pythagorists  or  Acousmatics,  and  were  frequently  parodied  in  the 
Middle  Comedy  at  Athens.  The  Order,  on  account  of  its  mystical 
character,  preserved  its  doctrines  as  secrets,  as  was  the  general  rule 
with  all  Mysteries  (cf.  Orphic  and  Eleusinian).  This  rule  of  silence 
was  observed  by  the  Acousmatics ;  but  when  the  religious  side 
was  altered  by  the  Mathematicians,  they  felt  no  compunction 
about  publishing  their  scientific  views.  In  this  way  we  can  account 
for  the  very  defective  tradition  in  regard  to  the  Founder  and  his 
early  followers,  and  at  the  same  time  for  the  general  information 
in  regard  to  the  views  of  Pythagoreans  in  the  late  fifth  and  the 
fourth  centuries. 

4.  In  the  latter  part  of  the  fifth  century  the  outstanding  thinker 
in  the  Order  was  Philolaus,  who  came  from  Italy  to  Thebes,  and 
then  returned  to  Italy.  The  scientific  section  of  the  Order  at  this 
time  was  mainly  interested  in  mathematics  (arithmetic  and  geome- 
try), and  had  made  great  progress  in  that  subject.  But  Philolaus 
also  developed  the  traditional  cosmology  in  the  light  of  recent 
tendencies  in  philosophy.  I  have  given  my  interpretation  of  his 
thought  in  chapter  ix  of  Part  I,  which  may  be  summarized  as 
follows:  (1)  the  point  of  view  now  includes  the  individual  objects 
of  nature;  (2)  these  are  said  to  be  constituted  by  a  form  or  limit 
impressed  on  stuff  or  body;  (3)  the  body  itself  consists  of  the  four 
Empedoclean  elements;  (4)  the  object  is  known  by  its  form,  shape 

£  344  H 


APPENDIX  II 

and  size,  which  is  called  number;  (5)  the  form  is  the  action  of  a 
cosmic  force,  called  Harmony;  (6)  knowledge  is  made  possible 
by  the  fact  that  objects  have  form  or  number,  which  may  be 
measured. 

5.  The  followers  of  Philolaus,  who  belong  to  the  first  part  of 
the  fourth  century  and  were  contemporaries  of  Plato,  were  thinkers 
who  lacked  intellectual  vigor ;  and  they  exercised  their  little  origi- 
nality merely  in  attempting  to  extend  some  of  Philolaus'  views. 
Philolaus  had  held  that  things  have  number ;  but  his  pupil  Eurytus 
maintained  that  things  are  numbers  and  he  would  demonstrate  the 
numerical  properties  of  an  object  by  arranging  pebbles  in  the  out- 
line of  the  object.  Other  members  of  the  Order  refused  to  go  as  far 
as  Eurytus  and  were  content  with  the  theory  that  things  were  like 
numbers  or  were  made  according  to  numbers.  We  can  see  that  the 
presupposition  of  these  views  is  the  doctrine  that  the  point  is  a 
unit  having  position  and  that  space  or  extension  is  made  up  of 
points.  The  thought  of  the  Order  at  this  time,  as  Aristotle  hints, 
was  really  an  attempt  to  turn  mathematics  into  cosmology  on 
superficial  analogies. 

6.  Both  Socrates  and  Plato  were  deeply  interested  in  Pythago- 
rean views,  and  many  of  the  Pythagoreans,  especially  those  who 
possessed  a  genuine  interest  in  science,  were  attracted  to  the  Acad- 
emy. It  would  seem  that  the  Pythagorean  impulse  for  scientific 
investigation  was  largely  absorbed  by  the  Academy  in  Plato's  last 
years ;  and  Aristotle  speaks  as  if  there  were  only  minor  differences 
between  some  Pythagorean  views  and  those  of  Plato.  But  the  Acous- 
matics  continued  independently  to  maintain  the  ancient  religious 
practices. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Abdera  129,  198 

Academy  152,  257,  345 

Acousmatics  344,  345 

Aeschines  of  Sphettus  179 

air  27,  28,  30,  39,  40,  45,  67,  84,  85, 

98,  181,  201,  214,  301,  310.  See  also 

s.v.  void 
Alcmeon  44  n.  13,  69,  76,  262,  308 
Anaxagoras  74,  95-106,  107-11,   114, 

116,   120,   126,   141,   143,   146,   156, 

162,   181,   188,   196,  212,  265,  288, 

296,  304,  309,  313,  314,  3i8,  321, 

327>  328 
Anaximander  18,  19,  25,  27,  32,  33, 

39,  42,  44,  48,  53,  55,  65,  77.  252-7, 

279,  281,  295,  300,  324 
Anaximenes  18,  25,  28,  39,  44,  65,  95, 

181,  206-11,  213,  255-7,  260,  265, 

279,  282,  295,  301,  324 
animism  31,  317 
anthropomorphism  46,  47,  91,   144, 

212,  312-20 
Antisthenes  of  Athens  109,  124,  179 
appearance  80,  303,  328 
Archelaus  109,  no,  154,  155,  293 
Archytas  272,  273 
Aristippus  124 
Aristophanes    108,    110,    151-4,    156, 

178 
Aristotle  26,  33,  46,  48,  68,  76,  86, 

101,   103,  104,  117,  124,  127,  142, 

143,  151-3,  172,  173,  179,  198,  199, 

202,  209  n.  23,  210  n.  24,  212,  227, 

240,  244,  262,  280,  294,  298,  321, 

33',  340 
arithmetic  22,  40-2,  257 
astronomy  22,  248,  253,  259,  263,  266, 

272 
Athens  70,  95,  107-10,  1 19,  120,  122, 

126,  129,  154,  155,  199,  332 
atomism  78,  86,  100,  111,  125,  126, 

129,  196-229,  327,  330 


Babylon  21,  25,  247-9 
boundless  27,  34,  301 


cause  161,  165-70,  192,  206,  209,  249, 
250,  300,  319,  327;  gods  7,  9,  10, 
12,  30;  materials  161,  165-70,  192, 
206,  209,  249,  250,  300,  319,  327 

Cebes  141  n.  20,  146,  147,  162 

celestial  bodies  39,  42,  48,  54,  78, 
133.  See  also  s.v.  astronomy 

chance  23,  89  n.  6,  102,  124  n.  27,  222 

change  31-4,  54,  67,  68,  75,  77,  83,  84, 
87,  88,  96,  98,  .102,  323-31-  See 
also  s.v.  qualitative  change 

cheerfulness  220-5 

codes  of  law  5,  16-18,  23.  See  also 
s.v.  law 

common  (Heraclitus)  61 

compound  84,  87.  See  also  s.v.  mix- 
ture 

consciousness   184,   185 

continuum  64,  97,  128,  326 

Corax  70,  71 

corporeal  87,  88,  101,  134 

cosmology  155-62,  196,  227,  233-40, 
277,  296,  304,  3l8,  332 

cosmos  23,  45,  136,  141 

cults  11,  37 

custom  8,  11,  13,  15,  315 

cycle  20,  38,  89 

Cyclopes  15 

decad,  see  s.v.  tetractys 
deductive  174-7 

definition  171-3,  177,  178,  193,  227 
Democritus  100,  108  n.  1,  111  n.  8, 

112,    126,    183,    196-229,   240,   268, 

269,  292,  293,  298,  316,  321,  327 
design,  see  s.v.  purpose 
Diagoras  108 
dialectic  127,  160,  175,  193,  194  n.  78, 

276 
differentiation  27,  33,  39,  42-4,  90, 

102,  256 
Diogenes  of  Apollonia  33,  108,  no, 

181,  240,  266,  293,  309 
directive  power  101,  182,  188,  314-20 


C  349  H 


INDEX 


divinity  7-9,  29-34,  45-8,  61,  74,  141, 
185,  286,  305.  See  also  s.v.  god 

doxographical  tradition  20,  25,  29, 
38,  48,  51 

earth  26,  27,  39  n.  4,  48,  54,  56,  84, 

98,  203,  272 
ecstasy  37 
eddy,  see  s.v.  vortex 

Egypt  25,  1  15,  247-9 

Eleatic  School  22,  46,  63,  ill,  112, 
125,  126,  129,  196,  197,  200,  239, 
293,  294.  See  also  s.v.  Parmenides, 
Zeno,  Melissus 

elements  84,  85,  87,  89,  92,  96,  97, 
133-6,  139.  141 ,  205,  328 

Empedocles  12,  45  n.  14,  46,  68,  69, 
82-94,  95,  96,  101,  102,  107,  111, 
112,  116,  118,  126,  133-5,  162,  181, 
196,  212,  263-5,  281,  288,  296,  304, 
309,  313,  3H.  317.  3i8,  327,  328 

Epicharmus  293 

epistemology  113,  146,  171,  194,  241, 
242 

eristic  124 

ethical,  ethics,  23,  24,  38,  46,  49,  60, 
62,  93,  105,  106,  113,  117,  131, 
147-50,  161,  178-95,  219-29,  242-5, 
284-98 

Euclides  of  Megara  124 

Euripides  95,  108  n.  3,  116,  293 

Eurytus  45  n.  14,  163,  345 

evolution  90,  254,  255,  264 

Fate  8,  10,  186 

fire  27,  28,  33,  39,  40,  45,  54-6,  58-60, 

76,  84,  98,  302 
flux  54,  56-8 
force  87,  135,  141,  144,  145,  202,  206, 

304,  305,  314,  318,  327-32 
form  85,  135,  139,  140,  142,  144,  163- 

9»  177.  304,  330,  344 

geometry  22,  40,  69,  251,  252,  257-9, 
266-8,  269,  273 

gods,  personal  7-14,  22-4,  29,  37,  46- 
8,  59,  148-50,  161,  168,  185,  186, 
215  n.  29,  222,  236,  286,  342;  ma- 
terial 26,  29-34,  45,  58,  65,  92,  93, 
101,  144,  148-50 

good  8,  57,  58,  61,  92,  121,  167-9,  186, 
289,  291,  292 

Gorgias  69,  no,  111  n.  9,  112,  113, 
119,  122,  126,  130,  131,  296 


Hades  8,  181,  186 

harmonics  22,  43,  69,  257,  273 

harmony  42-4,  53,  56,  58,  134-50,  162, 

218,  290,  292,  310,  330,  340-2 
Hecate  10  n.  14 
Helios  8  n.  5 
Heracles  116 
Heraclitus  18,  19,  22,  33,  35-7,  51-62, 

65-8,  75-7,  83,  96,  114,  115,  118  n. 

20,  130,   145,  181,  213,  221,  260-2, 

279,  287,  296,  302,  303,  306,  313, 

321,  325,  327 
Herodotus  20  n.  35,  113  n.  12,  115, 

183,  298 
Hesiod  3,  5,  9-13,  15-17,  46,  237,  247, 

286,  298,  313 
Hippias  no,  119,  267 
Hippocrates  of  Chios  267,  268,  293 
Hippocrates  of  Cos  93,  263,  270,  271, 

280 
Hippon  110 
Homer  7-9,  13,  16,  46,  49,  51,  59,  60, 

180,  183,  247,  286,  298,  313 
Humanism  113-23,  133,  146,  199,  241, 

291,  318 
hylozoism  31 
hypothesis  176,  177,  276 

idealism  196,  197 

impiety  108  n.  4,  155 

incommensurability   130,  273 

incorporeal  164,  184 

inductive  171-7,  271 

inference  70-3,  174 

infinite  127,  128,  200,  203  n.  20,  266, 

305,  330.  See  also  s.v.  boundless 
infinite  divisibility  96,  100,  101,  127, 

200,328 
injustice,  see  s.v.  justice 
intellect,  intelligence,  see  s.v.  mind 
Ionia  17,  25,  30  n.  8,  35,  36,  46,  48, 

70,  95,  107,  295 
irony  (Socrates)  154,  194 
Isocrates  124,  179,  180  n.  SS 

justice  15,  16,  19,  27,  44,  45,  SS,  56, 
76,  77,  227,  228,  287,  288,  313 

knowledge  102,  103,  121,  134,  146  n. 
32,  147,  149,  186-94,  217,  219,  222, 
223,  251,  274-6,  287-90,  306-20, 
342 ;  classification  of  5,  49,  160, 
237,  244.  See  also  s.v.  understand- 
ing 


C  35o  3 


INDEX 


law  14-18,  23,  27,  56,  78,  113,  130, 

137,  141,  289.  See  also  s.v.  codes, 

regularity 
Leucippus    100,    110,   125,    126,    129, 

196-214,  236,  268,  269,  293,  296 
limit,  limiting  38-40,  43-6,  56,  136- 

46,  302,  340-2 
logical  62,  66,  72,  74,  80,  170-8,  204, 

208,  221,  227,  229,  242,  255-7,  300 
Love  87-92,  101,  135,  143,  162,  288, 

317 
luck,  see  s.v.  chance 
Lydia  21  n.  36,  115,  286 

materialism  196,  197,  211 
mathematics  40,  110,  139  n.  17,  170, 

257-9,  265,  273,  275,  285.  See  also 

s.v.    arithmetic,    geometry,    har- 
monics 
matter  135,  139 
measure,  measurement  <;^,  56,   130, 

137-42,  171,  189  n.  74,  248 
mechanical  88,  102,  114 
medicine  69,  82,  139  n.  17,  264,  270, 

331 
Melissus  110,  125,  126,  129,  156,  197 

n.  1,  296 
Meton  267,  278,  293 
Milesian,    see    s.v.    Thales,    Anaxi- 

mander,  Anaximenes 
Mind  74,  91,    101-5,    114,    143,   162, 

212,  266,  288,  306-20 
mission  (Socrates)  154,  155,  178,  193 
mixture  76,  86-8,  91,  96,  98,  101,  102, 

134.  142 
moderation  223-5 
motion  127,  128,  131,  201,  202,  208, 

215,  314,  319.  See  also  s.v.  change 
music  38  n.  l,  43,  137.  See  also  s.v. 

harmonics 
mysteries  36,  59,  61,  148,  181,  344 
mystical  88,  89,  92,  110,  148,  183  n. 

63,  222 
mythology  3,  22,  49 

names  41,  80 

nature   13,  30,  41,  104,  113-15,  133, 

212,  318 
necessity  74,  77,  89,   102,  145,  213, 

227 
Nous,  see  s.v.  mind 
numbers  40-2,  45  n.  14,  136,  140-6, 

163,  258,  340-2 


Oenopides  266,  278,  293 
opinion  68,  79,  80,  217,  307-12 
opposites  18,  19,  27,  35,  39  n.  4,  40, 
48,  53-8,  84,  98,  102,  105,  134  n.  2, 
140,  301,  303.  See  also  s.v.  strife 
Orphic  12,  36,  70,  77,  no,  147,  148, 
181 

Parmenides  39,  62,  63-81,  82-4,  87, 
89,  95,  97,  101,  102,  110-12,  115, 
126,  127,  130,  156,  174,  182,  208, 
213,  227,  262,  279,  296,  303,  307, 
313-15,  321,  325,  327 

Peloponnesian  War  155 

perception,  see  s.v.  senses 

Pericles  95,  109,  110,  116  n.  16,  120, 
129 

period  of  history  233-45,  333 

Persia  113 

Phaedondas  162 

Phidias  108  n.  4 

Philolaus  45  n.  14,  no,  112,  126,  133- 
50,  162,  168,  198,  272,  290,  292, 
298,  304,  305,  310,  327,  330,  339-45 

philosophy    238-45,    260,    261,    270, 

277-83,  294,  321-35 
physiology  76,  184,  214-18,  262,  266, 

309,  311 
Pindar  115,  116  n.  16,  118  n.  19,  293 
Plato  12,  53  n.  1,  73,  74,  100,  103, 

104,  109,  111,  117,  124,  125,  127, 

130,  139  n.  17,  143,  151-3,  173,  179, 

209-12,  240,  243-5,  262,  273-6,  280, 

292-4,  297,  298,  306,  316,  321,  327, 

331,  345 
pleasure  223-6 
pluralism  126 
points  42,  127,  128,  345 
pores  86,  92,  264 
Poseidon  8,  30 
power  9,  101,  103,  144,  149,  314.  See 

also  s.v.  force,  directive  power 
prehistory  3,  4 
principle  30,  32-4,  40,  45,  57-9,  61, 

142,  143,  183,  285,  299-305,  314 
proof  64,  65,  68,  72-4,  79 
Protagoras  108  n.  4,  110-12,  116,  117, 

118  n.   19,   119,   126,   129-31,   198, 

219,  296 
purification  37,  38,  45,  147-50,  181, 

285 
purpose  102,  103,  146,  166,  170 
Pythagoras  12,  35-46,  51,  52,  65,  78, 


C  351  1 


INDEX 


118,  134,  135,  191  n.  77,  259,  261, 

279>32is324.343 

Pythagorean  22,  37,  60,  63,  69,  75, 
77,  110,  111,  126,  130,  133,  143,  147, 
162-4,  168,  181,  199,  218,  227,  257- 
60,  266,  271,  272,  284,  285,  294, 
298,  302,  339-45 

Pythagorists-285,  344 

qualitative  change  31,  32,  54,  56,  57, 

84.  323-7 
qualities  53  n.  l,  84,  85,  98,  99,  100, 

328 

rationalization  300-6 

reason  64,  70,  72-5,  77,  115,  174,  175, 

197  n.  1 
regularity  8,  11,  12-15,  18-24,  29,  34, 

45.  55.  56,  77,  78,  89,  114,  130,  144- 

6,  211-13,  251,  300 
reincarnation  12,  38,  60,  92 
relativism  112,  131 
religion  7-13,  22-4,  36-8,  45-50,  82, 

93,  109,  116,  148,  150,  159,  318 
reminiscence   173,  190-3 
rhetoric  68,  69,  73,  95,  110,  112,  121, 

122,  124,  174 
rotation  98,  102 

scepticism  112,  116  n.  17,  134,  136, 
139  n.  17,  164,  194,315 

schools  of  philosophy  322 

science  24,  25,  28,  36,  48,  49,  52,  76, 
82,  83,  92-4,  113,  116,  117,  133, 
156-62,  170,  174,  178,  188,  238-40, 
246-85,  335 

seeds  (Anaxagoras)  97,  99,  100 

self-direction  58,  59,  103,  114 

sensation,  senses  52-7,  67,  75,  80,  82, 
92,  99,  104,  130,  131,  141,  181,  192, 
214,  216-19,  263,  264,  279-83,  300- 
12,  314,  316 

Sicily  46,  70,  82,  131 

Simmias  108  n.  3.  140,  162 

Socrates  100,  108-13,  123,  124,  126, 
143,  147,  151-95,  214,  240-5,  281, 
291,  292,  294,  297,  298,  305,  312, 
316,  327,  331,332,  345 

Solon  16  n.  32,  56,  1 15,  1 18  n.  19 

Sophist,  sophistry  73,  110-26,  129-31, 
133,  152,  185,  187,  212,  240,  280, 
289,  294,  297,  3'2,  315,  331 

Sophocles  108 

soul  28,  37,  J2,  J8-61,  104,  140,  141, 


144,  147,  178-94,  214-29,  243,  255, 

292,  306 
space  127.  See  also  s.v.  void 
sphere  64,  88,  90-2,  135,  341,  342 
stability  54,  S5>  224,  225,  323 
strife  34,  52,  53,  56,  87-9,  91,  92,  101, 

287,  288 
substance  67,  68,  83,  85,  87,  96,  100, 

143,  304,  324-30 
suicide  147 

tetractys  40,  45,  141,  341 
Thales  3,   19-21,  25,  26,  30,  32,  65, 
235,  236,  251,  252,  295,  300,  323, 

324 
themistes  14,  297 
Theodorus  273 

Theophrastus  76,  91,  198,  203,  216 
thing  45  n.  14,  56,  83,  85,  88,  97,  99- 

101 
thought,  see  s.v.  knowledge 
Thucydides  124 
time  127,  128 
Tisias  70,  71 
truth  67,  68,  74,  79,  80,  130,  131,  241, 

306-12,  335,  342 

understanding  52,  53,  56-62,  93,  106, 

222,  223,  263,  264 
uniformity,  see  s.v.  regularity 
unit,  unity  53,  54,  56-8,  60,  61,  196, 

325,  341 
universal  164,  169,  171,  173,  191,  192 
unlimited,  see  s.v.  limit 

values  284-91 

virtue  60,  121,  161,  187-94,  253 

void  39,  40,  42,  45,  67,  84,  86,  129, 

134,  199-201,  326 
vortex  28,  88,  98,  203,  205 

water  26,  28,  30,  31,  48,  ?4,  84 

way  of  life  38,  60,  61,  284,  291 

Way  of  Opinion  63,  75-81 

Way  of  Truth  63-75,  79-81 

way  up  and  down  (Heraclitus)  55, 

66,  303 
weight  200  n.  14,  202  n.  19,  20£ 
What-is  64,  66,  67,  77,  80,  127,  129- 

31,  197 
Wheel  of  birth  12 
will  188-93 
wisdom,  see  s.v.  understanding 


I  352  3 


INDEX 

Xanthippe  153  Yahweh  9 
Xenophanes  22,  23,  33,  35,  36,  46-50, 

53>  63,  65,  103,  110,  116,  260,  285-  Zeno  63,  70,  no,  125-9,  156,  208,  266, 

7,  296,  298,  306,  313.  314.  3i8,  321  296 

Xenophon  118  n.  19,  151-3,  157,  179  Zeus  8,  9,  16,  47,  60,  215  n.  29,  313 


7  5  h 


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